Orson Welles' Too Much Johnson, screened for the first time to a full house at Pordenone Festival of Silent Cinema, comes trailing clouds of mystery like so much else in the life and work of its maker.
We know Welles shot the film in 1938 with a newsreel cameraman, intending it as a series of insert sequence within a play he was producing with the Mercury Theater. For various reasons, the three sequences, intended to carry the exposition in William Gillette's 1894 farce, were not ready or could not be projected when the play opened, and as a result the show was not a success.
Now George Eastman House has restored what it describes as Welles' cutting copy, apparently discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone itself. It consists of several reels of loosely ordered material with multiple takes, and was presented without any alteration apart from the preservation necessary to make the material projectable.
We know Welles shot the film in 1938 with a newsreel cameraman, intending it as a series of insert sequence within a play he was producing with the Mercury Theater. For various reasons, the three sequences, intended to carry the exposition in William Gillette's 1894 farce, were not ready or could not be projected when the play opened, and as a result the show was not a success.
Now George Eastman House has restored what it describes as Welles' cutting copy, apparently discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone itself. It consists of several reels of loosely ordered material with multiple takes, and was presented without any alteration apart from the preservation necessary to make the material projectable.
- 10/30/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Musical accompaniment enhanced the mood of silent films, as this year's British Silent Film festival made loud and clear
Harpo Marx lasted just two weeks as a silent film pianist – and it's no wonder. The poor bloke only knew two songs (Waltz Me Around Again, Willie and Love Me and the World is Mine), which he would rotate, speeding up or slowing down his fingers in hopes of fitting the music to the action on the screen. Luckily, not all players had such limited repertoires, and the 14th British Silent Film festival (held over the weekend, at the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Cinema Museum in London) explored the forgotten quirks and grand achievements of silent film accompaniment.
Whether gathering testimony from filmgoers, or unearthing old scores in archives, the project to discover what cinemas in the silent era really sounded like is a vast one. Evidence is hard to find,...
Harpo Marx lasted just two weeks as a silent film pianist – and it's no wonder. The poor bloke only knew two songs (Waltz Me Around Again, Willie and Love Me and the World is Mine), which he would rotate, speeding up or slowing down his fingers in hopes of fitting the music to the action on the screen. Luckily, not all players had such limited repertoires, and the 14th British Silent Film festival (held over the weekend, at the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Cinema Museum in London) explored the forgotten quirks and grand achievements of silent film accompaniment.
Whether gathering testimony from filmgoers, or unearthing old scores in archives, the project to discover what cinemas in the silent era really sounded like is a vast one. Evidence is hard to find,...
- 4/12/2011
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
How best to profess your love to your significant other on Valentines Day than to give the gift of silence? In their fourth annual mid-Winter edition, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (Sfsff) returns with four classics: Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality (1923) with live piano accompaniment by Philip Carli of the Flower City Society Orchestra; Sergei Komarov’s A Kiss From Mary Pickford (1927) co-presented by the Mary Pickford Foundation and the San Francisco Film Society (with Sffs’s own Steve Jenkins reading a live translation of Ukranian intertitles and Carli once more gracing the ivories); F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), co-presented by The Film Noir Foundation and accompanied by Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer (with an on-screen slide-show and program notes by Hell on Frisco Bay‘s Brian Darr); and—last but not least—Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary (1927), co-presented by Jesse...
- 2/4/2009
- by Michael Guillen
- Screen Anarchy
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.