Confidential Report

This is a highly uneven but interesting mystery from Mercury Productions and writer-director Orson Welles. Two-bit American hustler Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) searches for a mysterious, super-rich man named Gregory Arkadin (Orson Welles) in hopes of getting some money from him, one way or another. Surprisingly, Arkadin confesses to Guy that he suffers from amnesia, and he hires Guy to research Arkadin's past to fill in the blanks of his past. Guy suspects there's more to the story when those he interviews start showing up dead.

This movie is a mess, but it's a fascinating mess. The movie was taken out of Welles' hands in the editing phase and was released in various cuts all over the world over the course of a decade or more. The version I watched was assembled from all of the various versions, and supposedly most closely resembles what Welles wanted. It's still a slightly confusing jumble, but it's entertaining. It's unlike most movies of the mid 50's, with rapid edits, odd camera angles, and the aforementioned narrative structure utilizing flashbacks.

The sound is either mostly or all post-dub, which also adds to the disorienting effect. This movie has a lot of flaws (several shots are out of focus, Welles' fake nose looks terrible), but I found it an intriguing mystery, and I was never quite certain what was coming, which is exceedingly rare these days. Plus, the many brief appearances of classic character actors, such as AkimTamiroff, Katina Paxinou, Mischa Auer, and Michael Redgrave, all playing bizarre and eccentric characters, is amusing.

After seeing Gregoire Aslan knifed on a dock and hearing a couple of last words like Sophia and Mr. Arkadin, Robert Arden and girl friend Patricia Medina know at least part of it.

Mr. Arkadin refers to the mysterious gazillionaire played by Orson Welles. However Sophia is as elusive at first as the mysterious 'rosebud' in Citizen Kane.

Welles seeing that Arden is a man of wit and resource in the seamier side of life, hires him to find out about Sophia. In fact the story that Welles gives Arden is that before 1927 when he found himself in Zurich, Switzerland with several million francs, he has amnesia and has no memory of his past.

It's obviously a lie because one of the reasons that Arkadin is so mysterious is that he has steadfastly refused to be photographed. Not something someone would normally do unless they had a lot to hide.

Still Arden takes the assignment and it leads to some startling answers and puts Arden's life in peril.

Welles came up short with Mr. Arkadin. It's an intriguing story and has some good performances by the cast members already mentioned and people like Mischa Auer, Akim Tamiroff, Michael Redgrave, and Katina Paxinou from Welles's past. Problem is that Welles seems to be using a lot more in his bag of tricks than is necessary to tell the tale.

A little to arty for art's sake. Still it's an interesting story and well acted.

In this curious film, the ridiculous clashes with the sublime. Robert Arden and Patricia Medina turn in two of the worst, cheesiest performances imaginable. They're both straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon. He's all lock-jawed and hard-boiled; she vacillates between wide-eyed fawning and witch-like threats. The tedium they engender is very difficult to get past, because you can't even watch them as campy.

That's partly because their performances are just that bad, and partly because there is so much else in this movie that works well, or at least strives for excellence. There are a variety of striking images placed before us. Welles' eye for distinctive camera angles and atmospheric lighting was working overtime in this picture. You might quibble with some of his choices as being a tad too melodramatic, but you can't fault him for careful attention to detail. His performance is the usual Welles stuff--overpowering, and perhaps at times almost cartoonish like that of Arden and Medina. But make no mistake: when Welles was cartoonish, it was because he meant to be. Not because that was the only way he knew how to "act." Paolo Mori was also wonderful as as Arkadin's daughter. There were other great characters along the way. Their performances also clash noisily with the wooden hamming from Arden.

And, as others have mentioned, the sound is problematic. Clearly, the movie was overdubbed, and badly, after the fact. In fact, when I first started watching it, I was convinced that it was originally filmed in a foreign language. Nope--something went wrong during filming, it appears, or Welles for reasons of his own decided to re-do all of the sound in the studio after filming. The result is pretty bad. Whether a scene is in a small room, a piazza, an open field, or a vaulted cathedral, the result is the same. Background noise sounds just like that: artificial background noise. The voices sound like they were recorded in a very small, very dead studio. Amateurish and clumsy.

The result is a movie that is, at times, interesting to watch, but it's hard to forget its weaknesses, even for a moment.

One wonders how many times the stagehands had to wrangle a raging Welles off of Arden, prying his hands from the actor's neck, convincing him that murder is illegal, even for a cinematic giant, feeding him rum punch and peanuts, and telling Arden to go hide for fifteen minutes until the anger has passed.

To get the full value out of Arkadin, i recommend you only see it once you've seen most other Welles pictures, from the Good (Kane, Ambersons, Trial, Falstaff, Touch of Evil), The Bad... okay, they're all still interesting, i wouldn't call any of them bad, but some of them were more marred by production conditions (Othello, Macbeth) or cutting by the studio (Lady from Shanghai) than others. If you've fallen in love with Welles' brilliant pictures, seen the times when he wasn't able to realise his ambitions, and heard about all his unfinished films and seen the tantalising segments from some of them (notably, for me, Merchant of Venice and famously The Other Side of the Wind), you'll appreciate that we were able to see Mr Arkadin at all!

So while i know there is so much to admire in Arkadin, that each frame is aching with Wellesian visual beauty (which is closer to unusual/strangeness than classical beauty), i know that most people, especially Wellesian newbies, will find Arkadin inaccessible. The fact that it is quite difficult to follow, and its dialogue is often hard to understand, is made worse by the fact that its picture and soundtrack are in bad condition on all available video/dvd releases. The other notable thing about Arkadin is that it is available in different forms (like most Welles movies). Welles' initial Arkadin must have been quite disconcerting indeed. Like they usually did, the studio cut a fair portion of it, but still left it in its flashback form (which varies from one to two party scenes). Later on, someone, i don't know who, reordered Arkadin so it played out in chronological order. This is the version available for wide release in America, with Tony Curtis (for what reason i don't know) doing an introduction, and talking more about Kane than Arkadin. The only australian release of Arkadin at present seems to be the chronological one, so if i ever get my hands on the others i may write separate reviews on those.

And no it is not sufficient to sum Arkadin up as a poor remake of Kane. It has only superficial elements in common with Kane (mystery into true nature of old man, flashbacks), but visually it is nothing like Kane. I always put off watching it because i was upset by people's saying it was a poor man's Citizen Kane - but whoever said that can't have seen the same Arkadin i did.

For Welles fans there is so much to marvel at. It is one brilliant, original frame after another. I just couldn't watch it slow enough. I had to pause it about every ten seconds to wind back and watch something again and go "oooh" and "aaah." It also has sexy Patricia Medina and a great score.

Some favourite scenes:

The tracking back shot of Van Stratten (Robert Arden) going up the steps to Zouk's place (Akim Tamiroff).

The scenes of snow falling outside Zouk's place.

Every scene where Van Stratten is interviewing an eccentric character from Arkadin's past. All are such wonderful scenes. Especially the flea circus master scene.

The rocking boat scene is incredible. The sexual energy of voluptuous, erect-nippled Patricia Medina, stumbling around the room, giggling and taunting Arkadin as the rocking boat mirrors the shakiness of her drunken state.

There is a magestic tracking shot in the party scene, which takes place in a sort of ballroom resembling the Ambersons' ballroom, where i believe Welles almost made up for the studio's cutting up a similar sweeping unbroken tracking shot through the room in the ballroom scene in Magnificent Ambersons.

Essentially, 'Mr. Arkadin' is Orson Welles' attempt in using cinema to elevate Pulp into Myth. Based on "a lot of bad radio scripts" (in Welles' words) written for the Harry Lime radio shows, one could also read it as a more personal attempt to free himself from the shackles of 'Citizen Kane' (with which it has numerous , although superficial, parallels) and be reborn as a Europeoan filmmaker. The fact that (again) Welles was restricted by budget and eventually dismissed from the editing room due to the commercial concerns of his producer Louis Dolivet does not diminish what is still a highly intriguing work. In fact, 'Mr. Arkadin' has become something of an enigma unto itself and the story of it's creation and subsequent undoing is as fascinating as the film itself.

For those interested in investigating further, The Criterion Collection have done a wonderful 3 disc edition which collates all the available edits (including two Spanish versions which are known, hilariously, by the unexplained mis-crediting of the lead actor!?) and working them into a 'final' version hinted at by Welles' notes and conversations with the ubiquitous Peter Bogdanovich (who also features in the documentary, unsurprisingly). This 'final' version, while far from perfect, restores the original flashback structure as well as the original beginning and ending sequences. On the first disc, however, is the 'Corinth' version (originally discovered by Bogdanovich) that already incorporates some of the author's original intentions. This particular edit also features a highly illuminating commentary track by Welles scholars Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore who consider this version to be the most satisfying. Also included are three mp3's of the aforementioned Harry Lime radio plays that had a direct influence on the story, featurettes by Welles biographer and actor Simon Callow, and a highly welcome reprint of the Mr. Arkadin novel (or novelisation? - you decide) with an excellent newly commissioned introduction by Robert Polito. All in all, this set is a must for the Welles aficionado and should be of interest to anyone with a true appreciation of cinema.