Lost until its discovery in an Italian warehouse in 2013, this rough cut—made three years before Citizen Kane—is the earliest footage by Orson Welles in existence. Welles intended to include cinematic interludes during his theatrical production of William Gillette’s play Too Much Johnson, yet due in part to technical difficulties at the theater, the film was never finely edited nor publicly shown in his lifetime. Appropriately, as one of his first experiments in cinema, Welles delivers a rambunctious tribute to the slapstick antics of silent cinema, even incorporating a sweetly parodic nod to the avant garde. A young, dashing Joseph Cotten throws himself across rooftops, down ladders, off ledges and over walls, pursued through the streets and eventually to Cuba by his lover’s jealous husband. In the film’s current state the artifice of cinema further bubbles up through unexcised extra takes and occasional gaffes, producing an engaging, reflexive ode to the medium Welles would shortly master with a single film.