Monday night, I went to see the Orson Welles' recovered film Too Much Johnson (1938) at the Director's Guild of America Theatre. The event was hosted by the George Eastman House and the film was narrated by various curators and archivists who worked on the preservation of the film, including Paolo Usai Cherchi. Found in Italy in 2012, the recovered and restored 35mm print was screened for the first time at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival earlier this fall.
While the feature film deserves its own dissecting of various Wellesian techniques (especially considering that it was actually intended to be a prologue for a theatre version of William Gillette's play), I would like to focus my discussion on the supplemental 16mm home movie that was screened directly after the 35mm print. This film, specifically distinguished as a "home movie," was—to to the best of my knowledge, considering its presentation notes at the screening—not found with the feature in Pordonene or restored with it in Pittsburgh, but rather it was originally located at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Doing a quick online search, I found a short clip of the 3 minute film along with archival information on the website of the National Film Preservation Foundation.[1] As the website details, the footage was donated by the family of Myron S. Falk, who was an investor in the Mercury Theatre.
Seeing Welles directing is fascinating in itself, but it was also telling to see this home movie footage after the final scene of Too Much Johnson. As Paolo Usai Cherchi discussed at the Monday night screening, whoever was making the home movie was within close proximity to the cameraman of Too Much Johnson. While the short film cut between Welles and the scene he was directing, the final scene of Too Much Johnson, depicting two women running towards the camera and then stopping and screaming (played by Virginia Nicholson Welles and Ruth Ford), can be seen just slightly off angle as compared to the feature film footage. In the feature film, these women ran towards the camera and were then presented in a close up shot depicting only their faces. In the home movie, the women are presented in a medium shot, from the just above the knees upward. This angle along with the recording of actors acting and Welles directing is an especially important "history of below."[2] It at once preserves fragments of the Too Much Johnson film production while presenting the enigmatic persona of Orson Welles. As a home movie, this is a private history rather than a public production. It places its audience in closer proximity to Welles, whom scholars and fans have been trying to dissect for decades. While Welles is still very much acting while he directs, his mannerisms and temperament are in accord with the histories of his volatile but jovial temperament. This short fragment of his directorial work adds just one more dimension to his persona.
In her introductory discussion of home movies, Patricia Zimmerman quotes Jim Sharpe on history from below:
"those writing history from below have not only provided a body of work which permits us to know more about the past: they have also made it plain there is a great deal more, much of its secret still lurking in unexplored evidence, which could be known. Thus history from below retains its subversive aura."[3]
Zimmerman continues this discussion:
"[h]istory from below raises questions about the nature of evidence, conceptual models, and methodology. These questions require moving beyond the traditional historiography of elites into intellectual alliances with social theory, anthropology, psychoanalysis, ethnography, and even science to admit—and find—new source material that tells different stories of those who have been denied a history."[4]
While Orson Welles is certainly not a subject of lost history, his disputes with the studio system and arguments over editing and post-production (especially in Magnificent Ambersons, Lady from Shanghai) suggests that there might be conflicting histories that can be rectified through a different avenue of study. Clearly, research within studio archives might reveal his correspondence with producers but home movie footage of Welles provides a different angle on this history.
I would like to argue that memories of Welles preserved in this home movie footage are semi-private rather than completely private. While it is a home movie, the film depicts a semi-public event, especially considering the celebrity status of Welles—even during his early film career—and the commentary given during the Monday screening of Too Much Johnson, which suggested that the final "Cuba" scene was shot on an operating quarry in New York, Welles and his team actually disturbing their daily schedule. However, despite this public presence that might classify the film as a type of tabloid, popular culture newsreel, the time and space of the home movie presents a particular function. The film not only presents fragments of an until-recently lost production, but also is a unique composition of a particular, private memory. Welles was not only directing, but he was among co-workers, friends, and his at-the-time wife, Virginia Nicholson Welles. While located in an actual archive, the film also participates in an imaginary archive like those discussed in Zimmerman's introduction.[5] Shots of Welles in his ridiculous straw hat, carefully directing his wife are not unlike the home movies of non-celebrities' family holidays or trips to Disneyland. According to Zimmerman, "[t]hese heterogeneous locations and functions of amateur film suggest the need for a parallel pluralization of methodological approaches to chart this large, variegated, multicultural, and international domain of home movies and trauma."[6] Certainly, dissecting Orson Welles and his newly recovered film needs a pluralization of methodological approaches. Especially due to the intended multi-disciplinary nature of Too Much Johnson, it seems appropriate to juxtapose the telling historical home movie next to the restored film.
It will be interesting to see what happens in the future editing and production displays of Too Much Johnson. Adding the home movie to the end of the screening of Too Much Johnson as an epilogue-like artifact does change the viewing experience. Considering the state of the film and the preservation efforts, it was extremely educational and useful to see this home movie after the final scene. However, if coupled with actual re-imagined productions of the play as discussed in long-term plans, I doubt the home movie will be a necessary component.
-Carrie Reese
[2] Zimmerman, Patricia R. "The Home Movie Movement: Excavations, Artifacts, Minings." In Mining the Home Movie Excavations in Histories and Memories. Eds. Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmerman . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008. Page 3
[3] Sharpe in Zimmerman, 3
[4] Zimmerman, 3-4
[5] Zimmerman, 18
[6] Zimmerman, 6