Орсон Уэллс: "Тың Тым Көп Джонсон" фильмінің тарихы

1938 film by Orson Welles

Too Much Johnson is a 1938 American silent comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. An unfinished film component of a stage production, it was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. It was shot to be integrated into Welles's Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy, but the film sequences could not be shown due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue, the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut. The resulting plot confusion reportedly contributed to the stage production's failure. The film was believed to be lost, but in 2008 a print was discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone, Italy. In 2014, the work print and a modern edit of the film were made available online by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Two previous films had been made of this play, a short film in 1900 and a feature length Paramount film in 1919 starring Lois Wilson and Bryant Washburn. Both of these films are now lost.

Welles never completed editing the film component for Too Much Johnson and put the footage in storage. He rediscovered it three decades later at his home outside of Madrid, 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", he later recalled. "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. It had a fine quality." In August 1970, a fire broke out at Welles's villa and the only known complete print of Too Much Johnson was destroyed. A copy was discovered in Italy in 2008, and on August 5, 2013, the George Eastman House museum of film and photography in the U. S. announced that it had completed a long process of restoration together with Cinemazero, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and laboratory experts in the U. S. and the Netherlands. Cinema Arts, a Pennsylvania film laboratory, performed most of the preservation work. "The next step was to begin the actual photo chemical preservation", said Tony Delgrosso, Head of Preservation at George Eastman House. "For that we turned to a lab called Cinema Arts who are world famous for the quality of their black and white photo chemical preservation and restoration." Too Much Johnson premiered October 9, 2013, at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. The film's North American premiere was held October 16, 2013, at George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre, and the film's New York City premiere took place on November 25, 2013, at the Directors Guild of America Theater. On August 21, 2014, the complete 66 minute work print of the film was posted online by the National Film Preservation Foundation. "If this edit is only a guess, it strives to be an educated one," stated the foundation, "informed by research into the unpublished play scripts left behind by Welles and the Mercury Theatre company." On February 5, 2015, Too Much Johnson was screened and performed for the very first time as a complete stage performance at the Film Forum in New York City, in association with George Eastman House, as Welles originally intended. The filmed portions were shown as prologues to the play's three acts which were performed as a staged reading by the Film Forum Players. The staged reading was directed by Allen Lewis Rickman, who adapted the play from both the Welles and Gillette versions. It was produced by Bruce Goldstein. Steve Sterner composed and performed the soundtrack for the film. The footage was re edited by William Hohauser to fit a coherent narrative structure in conjunction with the play. Sequences already edited by Welles were left intact.