75 years after it was shot, a silent film by Orson Welles is set to be screened at the Giornate del Cinema Muto festival in Italy. The film, though lost, was rediscovered in a warehouse in Pordenone, in north eastern Italy. It has now been painstakingly restored to life.
The film, Too Much Johnson, is a silent slapstick comedy which was originally made in three parts, each intended to introduce one act of a play put together by Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe. The play, which starred Joseph Cotton, ended up running without the film and was not successful. A subsequent fire at Welles' home was thought to have destroyed the only print of the film.
When rediscovered, the film had its first two reels in good condition but the third badly decomposed and covered in brown goo. It was passed to George Eastman House, an international museum of photography and film based in New York, and the museum found a Dutch company, Haghefilm Digitaal, which was willing to undertake the restoration work. Staff at the museum have proclaimed their delight at the result, with 96% of the material saved.
At the time when the film was made, Welles was primarily working on his radio broadcast of War Of The Worlds, which inadvertently caused mass panic across America. It would be another three years before he went on to make Citizen Kane.
