Too Much Johnson is an elaborate 1890's farce of mistaken identity. Cuckolded husband Dathis is on the tail of a man named Billings, who has been having an affair with Dathis’s wife. Billings flees to Cuba, where now also hiding from his own wife and mother-in-law, he adopts the identity of a plantation owner named Johnson, who is expecting a mail-order bride.

Shot in 1938 Too Much Johnson was Welles’ first feature, the film that helped him hone his craft and led him to create to the masterpiece that is Citizen Kane. The footage was presumed destroyed in a fire in Welles’ home in 1971 but was recently rediscovered in Italy and the restored 66 mins version makes its UK DVD debut.

“The film is far more than a curiosity; it’s a major rediscovery, one that deeply traces the roots of Welles’s art, both stylistically and thematically” - The New Yorker

Licensed from George Eastman House / Cinemazero / La Cineteca del Friuli.