Too Much Johnson
Made three years before the premiere of Citizen Kane (prior, Welles had only made the avant-garde short, The Hearts of Age). There was little mention of the project for years, and even Welles thought the only copy had disappeared (or, maybe, he didn’t want it found?). Several years ago, a copy of the unfinished work turned up in Italy and was restored. This small film project, which was to supplement a Broadway play (the premiere of which was a fiasco), already shows the genesis of the master’s style. It is a silent film (a total rarity in the 1930s), a comedy of errors about a relentless womanizer. Welles pays homage to American cinematic burlesque, plays with a somewhat musty genre through a superb imitation of its poetics. The film especially evidences the influence of Mack Sennett and Harold Llloyd.
Orson Welles
Visionary misunderstood by conservative Hollywood, a genius and madman who revolutionized film, an auteur in the fullest sense of the word – a director, screenwriter and actor. In 1938 his War of the Worlds radio program about Martians attacking Earth caused widespread panic in America. Several years later, he upended American movies with his Citizen Kane. But success did not assure him creative freedom and over the next decades his fights with producers dominated and, to great extent, destroyed his career.
Selected filmography
1941 Obywatel Kane / Citizen Kane
1946 Intruz / The Stranger
1947 Dama z Szanghaju / The Lady from Shanghai
1952 Otello
1958 Dotyk zła / Touch of Evil
1972 The Other Side of the Wind