Unseen Orson Welles film to premiere this fall in Italy

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- The late Orson Welles' recently discovered 1938 film "Too Much Johnson" has now been restored and will have its premiere in Italy this fall, organizers said.

Variety.com reported the unfinished work will screen Oct. 9 at the silent film festival Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone.

The movie's U.S. premiere is set for Oct. 16 at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y.

"This is by far the most important film restoration by George Eastman House in a very long time," the entertainment industry trade newspaper quoted Paolo Cherchi Usai, senior curator of film for George Eastman House, as saying. "Holding in one's hands the very same print that had been personally edited by Orson Welles 75 years ago provokes an emotion that's just impossible to describe."

Variety.com said the film is actually comprised of three shorts meant to be shown as prologues to each act of Welles' planned staging of an 1894 William Gillette comedy.

The films were to be screened with live music and sound effects, but they were never finished, the report said.

Welles is the celebrated writer-director-producer-star of the 1941 film "Citizen Kane." He died in 1985 at the age of 70.