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Orson Welles is more than a name in cinema. He is often shorthand for something exceptional. Something that is both tangible and intangible. For many (me included) he is also one of the greatest film makers to ever step into the medium. Few have seen his first film, which was made in 1938. The film suffered for a number of reasons. Maybe it being connected to his Mercury Theatre group. Or maybe its loss in a fire, meaning we only have the incomplete version. Or finally that now infamous WAR OF THE WORLDS radio play. TOO MUCH JOHNSON was Designed as a portion of Welles’s Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette’s 1894 comedy. This had already been seen as a silent film in 1919 , so was not new. But Welles film of TOO MUCH JOHNSON is a silent within a sound production, within which the hero of the piece flees from a pursing male. So as the question oft asked (and even more expectation fits to) is it any good?
Husband Leon Dathis (Edgar Barrier) cant keep his wife Clairette (Arlene Francis) away from romancer Billings (Joseph Cotten). Then one day, he comes home early and find said wife and said romancer in each others arms. This leads to Billings on the run. Down a flight of stairs. Through a market and along the streets. Leon will catch him but Billings has an idea and boards a ship, fleeing to Cuba. But things are not that simple. You see hiding from Leon, his own wife and mother-in-law, he has to adopt the identity of a plantation owner named Johnson, who is expecting a mail-order bride any day now!
TOO MUCH JOHNSON has been argued as helping hone Welles craft. This is after his artworks, his theatre and then just after his WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast (i.e. radio), so I question some of this. Some of the potency of his creativity was honed, indeed built and delivered on stages audio and visual. Instead I think that the film reveals Welles intelligence in the visual field that would be super upgraded three years later as a Greek Tragedy. Welles cinema here is interesting indeed. He is revealed to have a love for the slapstick of the silent greats like Keaton (which I knew well after researching for a Buster doc and him calling THE GENERAL a masterpiece) and an eye for great fluidity of silent cinema’s narrative flow. Taking how you tell by seeing and doing, like a river runs. Interjecting it with a humour (provided with gusto by the greatest film actor ever, Cotten) and pathos. Finally then delivering that absurdist dream of a second act before sadly leaving us adrift as we have no more.
There is a lot of Welles in TOO MUCH JOHNSON certainly. The problem is that there is no extra’s on this disc. Nothing. Nada. Sad really! Great film though.
