Johnson é Demais

Too Much Johnson (1938)

Orson Welles shot this film three years before CITIZEN KANE and it was never publicly shown. Welles had a print of the film but when he died he believed the only copy had burned in a fire but much later another print did turn up. Currently this film is available in a 66-minute workprint version as well as an edited 34-minute version, which apparently contains intertitles. It's worth pointing out that Welles himself never edited his "version" of the film.

Since I just viewed the workprint there's really no point in "reviewing" the film because what I viewed was pretty much every bit of footage that remains of the movie. When this was shown on Turner Classic Movies they decided to show this version because, I'm guessing, it contained the most footage and I'm sure most Welles fans wanted to see everything that was shot. The story itself is pretty simple as a man (Edgar Barrier) learns that the woman he loves is seeing another man (Joseph Cotten). Throughout the film Barrier chases Cotten around trying to catch him.

This was shot silent and was obviously a homage to the likes of Keystone and especially Harold Lloyd. Fans of the silent cinema will certainly want to watch this but those expecting to see something here that would predict the talent of Welles would eventually make something like CITIZEN KANE are going to be disappointed. Again, it's impossible to really judge a workprint but there are a few interesting things scattered throughout but I personally didn't see anything that would show early greatness from the director.

I thought the performances were quite good and especially Cotten who really does look like a silent film star. He manages to run around, climb buildings and fall over is a very believable and at times funny manor that really reminds you of some of the silent greats. The Lloyd influence is obvious. The film contains some good cinematography but without any intertitles it's really hard to follow the story. Perhaps the shorter, edited version takes care of this. As is, TOO MUCH JOHNSON is a film that Welles fans will want to watch but if you're unfamiliar with the genius then it would be best to start somewhere else first.

5 of 10 stars. This movie is worth watching as it is the 1st Film that Orson Welles ever Directed, and it is the only Silent Film he ever Directed; and it's the 1st Film that Joseph Cotten ever starred in, and the only Silent Film he ever starred in. And we know what they became, Welles, one of the most celebrated Director's in history; and Cotten having a great Acting career.

The film is mainly unedited, so I have scenes back to back, Cotten coming around the corner...then Cotten coming around the corner. So keep this in mind when you watch it, it's not a mistake or a bad copy you are watching...it's unedited. So keep that in mind.

It is filmed and Directed good, some of the shots and uses of shadows are extremely good, shots that aren't at a 90 degree or straight angle, all the stuff we now know about Welles that came later.

Cotten does a good job too, has a good physical presence that works in a Silent Film. It was only 3 years later that he starred alongside Orson Welles in the Welles Directed Masterpiece 'Citizen Kane'; and the year following Citizen Kane, Cotten starred in the Orson Welles Directed Masterpiece 'The Magnificent Ambersons'. It all happened so quick.

At the end of the day this is just an average film, and a film that Welles and Cotten never thought would go unedited; but it's a must see as it is a 1st for both, and an 'only' Silent for both.

This is a rough assembly of the footage--a cut down version could pretty easily be made and why no one bothered to do so or TCM didn't show a version like that if it exists is a shame. There is much more movie here than I expecting---having heard about this film for years, I thought it would be a few short sequences of only a few shots each, not such an elaborate chase sequence.

Most of the material is in very good shape--not scratched or marked up, there is one section that is badly damaged but most of it is clean and clear. Joseph Cotton does most of his own stunts and some of these rival those of Keaton, Chaplin, Lyold and this is no small feat.

But what you are watching is not a finished film so the fact that much of it is quite funny and impressive and done on a pretty large scale of probably "stolen' locations makes it captivating---if you turn off the god awful music--which you can easily do. What were they thinking putting this music on the film it's terrible vaguely European sounding Philip Glass rip off stuff. Really unbearable.

Also rather poor, but perhaps intentionally so, is the opening sequence shot on a set that is clearly being lit by the sun--as an early early silent film would be, and this may be done on purpose. This scene sets up the rest of the film and does feature funny performances and a bit with a blowing plant.

Despite this being a silent comedy it also features some very fast cutting at times and shows--as you can see in his later films--some lack of a sense of screen direction. Characters who are supposed to be talking to each other are looking the wrong direction--this may well be a factor of parts being shot separately and with different people behind the camera. There is real filmmaking here in what was supposed to just be filler for a stage production--I've seen stage shows do this type of thing with filmed sections and rarely are they this elaborate even today.

So let's get someone to cut this down, by about a third, put in a few titles to explain roughly what is missing in between sections and put on some good music and it would fill an interesting gap in Welles filmography as he never did a silent film elsewhere or an outright comedy.

Joseph Cotton fans should also take note of this film too, it's not just for Welles completest.

It's a misnomer to call Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane" his first movie he had ever directed. "Kane" was his first feature film, but prior to handling what is now recognized as cinema's top classic the young Welles had already notched four short movies under his directorship. His third, 1938's "Too Much Johnson" was his most ambitious of the four. Although not fully completed and is a silent, Welles' movie introduced many of the camera angles and editing techniques the director would use throughout his career.

"Too Much Johnson" wasn't designed to stand alone. Welles, 23, was already a wunderkind on the Broadway stage as a director and on the radio as both an announcer and a writer. His forte was Shakespeare, but he also delved into contemporary as well as classical works. His repertory company called the Mercury Theatre, formed in 1936, consisted of a regular group of actors, including Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins, performing on the stage as well as in his dramatic radio presentations.

"I think he was the greatest directorial talent we've ever had in the American theater," described Mercury actor Norman Lloyd. "When you saw a Welles production, you saw the text had been affected, the staging was remarkable, the sets were unusual, music, sound, lighting, a totality of everything."

Welles always had a love for movies, and brought his imagination onto the screen first in a now lost 1933 'Twelfth Night' rehearsal sketch, then the following year in 'The Hearts of Age,' a school project with his wife Virginia Nicolson for the Todd School. In "Too Much Johnson," Welles designed his movie to be shown in three parts, interspersed with a stage production of the 1894 William Gillette comedy of the same name. The combination of a live show and a film harkened back to the vaudeville days when stage acts were interspersed with short silent films to make an evening's entertainment. Trouble was Welles' ambition to present the hybrid never came to fruition when he was planning to present it at the Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut. The theater failed to secure a projector for "Too Much Johnson," so the audience saw only the play. Welles' failure to pay Paramount Pictures, who held the rights to Gillette's play, also put a halt to Orson's idea.

If anything, creating "Too Much Johnson" was a good exercise in filmmaking for the young Welles. There are hints of the style of direction he would display three years later in "Citizen Kane." He places a number of shots with the camera aiming downward as well as several shots looking up on his subjects. His mix between close-ups and medium shots are also unusual. The movie took ten days to shoot, ripping through nearly 25,000 feet of film for the intended 40 minutes in length. "Orson had a wonderful time making the film," remembered future director John Berry, who was assisting Welles in the production. He recalled Welles editing the movie in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City when a fire broke out, "What I remember, most remarkably, is me running with the projector in my hand, burning, trying to get out of the door into the hallway while Orson, with absolutely no concern whatsoever, was back inside, standing and looking at some piece of film in his hand, smoking his pipe." After the failure to show "Too Much Johnson," Welles took what he had edited and other additional footage and placed it in storage. Welles later came across the movie thirty years later at his home in Spain. "I can't remember whether I had it all along and dug it out of the bottom of a trunk, or whether someone brought it to me, but there it was. I screened it, and it was in perfect condition, with not a scratch on it, as though it had only been through a projector once or twice before." A 1970 fire in his house destroyed that copy, and everyone thought the movie was lost until another copy was miraculously found in Italy.

Welles was very busy during this period of his life. In his series on CBS Radio, 'The Mercury Theatre on the Air' broadcasted classical works dramatized over the airwaves. One episode Welles' produced was a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds.' The broadcast simulated a fictional radio news report he and his cast gave on the October 30, 1938 show focused on the landing of Martian space ships. A number of listeners failed to hear the disclaimer at the beginning stating the broadcast was a dramatization of the Wells' novel on the Martian invasion of Earth, and became hysterical at the thought they were being attacked.

Welles' worldwide fame bubbled overnight from the broadcast. Several Hollywood studios, already familiar with his inventiveness on the New York City stage, proposed lucrative offers to get him to produce movies. The most generous was RKO Pictures, consisting of a two-picture contract of any subject of his choice. He could write the script, produce, direct and act in the movies, and he was given the right to edit the movies' final cut. Welles signed with RKO on July 22, 1939, launching one of Hollywood's most unusual directorial and acting careers.

In the mid-1960s, I met Orson Welles while I was working for Lew Grade's ITC television organisation. Welles wanted Grade's backing for a film or TV project, and he was very eager to ingratiate himself. I had heard a rumour that 'Citizen Kane' was not actually Welles's film debut, and that he had directed some short films before 'Kane'. When I asked him about this, he graciously arranged for me to screen two brief films which he had directed pre-'Kane'. One of these was 'Too Much Johnson'.

Before I describe this movie, let me explain its source. 'Too Much Johnson' was originally an 1890s stage farce written by and starring William Gillette, an actor-playwright now remembered only for having written the first play about Sherlock Holmes. The main character in 'Too Much Johnson' is Augustus Billings, an American businessman who travels to Cuba with his wife and his termagant mother-in-law Mrs Batterson. Also aboard the steamship are a hot-tempered Frenchman and his wife, and some dim-witted Canadians. En route, Billings's wife discovers an embarrassing letter in his possession. To avoid divulging the truth, Billings claims that the letter was written by a Mr Johnson (who doesn't actually exist). In Cuba, the Billings party encounter an American named Joseph Johnson. Mrs Billings and her mother assume that this man is the author of the letter. Comic complications ensue ... but they're not very funny and certainly not believable.

Now, the film: the footage that Welles made (and which he allowed me to screen) was NOT a film version of Gillette's play. (His film ran only two reels, whilst Gillette's farce is a full-length play.) Nor is it an incomplete or abbreviated version of the stage play. Welles told me that he and the Mercury Theatre players had intended to stage a production of Gillette's play, directed by Welles. (I'm not certain if this production ever actually took place.) As an innovation, Welles and his cast filmed some bridging material, which would have been projected onstage during the scene changes. Welles cheerfully admitted that he had shot these sequences as an entree to Hollywood, in order to persuade the movie-studio executives that he could handle the disciplines of film direction.

Bearing in mind that this footage was never meant to be a complete film, it consists of several brief unlinked scenes. We see Joseph Cotten, Ruth Ford and the very funny Mary Wickes boarding a gangway at a wharf. (There's supposed to be a large ocean liner berthed just out of frame, but there obviously isn't; the quay is clearly too small -- and in water too shallow -- to harbour an ocean liner.) We also see the Frenchman and his wife (Edgar Barrier, Arlene Francis) in an unconvincing 'shipboard' sequence. We see some shaky hand-held footage of Joseph Cotten rushing about in the 'Cuban jungle', but the local flora don't look remotely tropical ... and Cotten's clothing, as well as his lack of perspiration, indicate that this footage was shot well north of the Tropic of Cancer. Welles told me that these scenes were filmed in Connecticut, but he didn't recall precisely where and I'm not even certain that he was being truthful. (During the same conversation, Welles told me that he had been a personal friend of Bram Stoker ... who in fact died three years before Welles was born.) None of the distinctive traits of 'Citizen Kane', such as Gregg Toland's depth-of-focus shots, or Welles's ceiling compositions, are in evidence here.

Welles also permitted me to see a brief clip of silent-film footage, shot mostly out of focus, consisting of some blurry close-ups of Joseph Cotten grinning outdoors in three-quarter view, a hand tugging a door-pull, and a brass bell spinning on a pavement. These clips seemed to be the result of Welles larking about with a camera, rather than increments of any sort of coherent film narrative. Judging from Cotten's appearance, and the general ineptitude of Welles's direction, these shots were filmed many months before 'Too Much Johnson' ... and they probably constitute Welles's debut as a film director.

The footage which I saw on this occasion has very little entertainment value except as a curiosity, and no significance except as a footnote to Welles's career ... and perhaps as a reminder that even geniuses have to start out completely ignorant of their disciplines. 'Citizen Kane' is definitely a masterpiece, but none of that genius is on offer in these film clips.