Mr. Arkadin

Plot synopsis:
Prologue: (narrated by Orson Welles) A small airplane with no one on board was flying along the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona . . . Opening shot shows an empty airplane in flight.Credits roll.At night, between the containers on a Naples pier, first we see a man running, then another, staggering, (Gregoire Aslan), who falls and we see a knife plunged on his back. Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) and his girlfriend Mily (Patricia Medina) happen upon the wounded man, and at once offer to stay with him and call for help. The dying man says no, no police, as I am dying anyway, in thanks for being good to me, listen, before I die I will give you some names that are worth millions. Find Gregory Arkadin, tell him you know about me, Bracco, and also about Sophie. In the confusion and noise of arriving police, Sophie's last name is garbled as Bracco dies.Guy is arrested for tobacco smuggling and put in prison for three months. Upon his release, he and Mily resolve to find out why that combination of names is valuable.Gregory Arkadin (Orson Welles) is a multimillionaire business magnate whose whereabouts are known, so Guy and Mily proceed to Cannes, but Arkadin has an enormous staff of bodyguards in charge of keeping riffraff away, so Guy can't get to him. Guy gets lucky as someone points out Arkadin's pretty daughter Raina (Paola Mori) to him. As he approaches, she is talking to her constant companion, the Marquess of Rutleigh (Jack Watling) and he says he is afraid to meet her father. Guy politely interrupts the conversation saying he would love to meet her father, and his daring strikes a chord with her, although she rebuffs his advances and warns that she is constantly watched by a large team of her father's employees.Guy has a conversation with Mily, telling her he will follow Raina and make advances to her in an attempt to get to Arkadin. Mily is a voluptuous cabaret entertainer who finds gigs easily, so she will try to become an entertainer for Arkadin, who throws big parties all the time.Guy keeps tailing Raina, finds out she will be driving to Spain, and persists in talking to her until she lets him ride along. On the ride, he is charming and she begins to fall for him.At their destination [Segovia], where Arkadin resides in the spectacular castle [the Alcázar], Guy manages to continue courting Raina while seeing the sights and observing a night parade of black-hooded men doing penance. As he kisses her and she warns that her father will destroy him if he is proved a fortune seeker, he vows he will never ever ask her to marry him. This enhances his attractiveness to Raina.Mily, meantime, sees enough that she feels jealous. If Guy is trying for a relationship with Raina, she will try for a relationship with Arkadin himself.Soon after at a masquerade ball at the castle, Guy enters as a guest and Mily has wangled a singing gig. As Guy enters, the camera follows him and the scale and magnificence of the party are a shocking display of wealth.Guy finally meets the mysterious billionaire Gregory Arkadin, and after a few remarks Arkadin leads him into Raina's cavernous bedroom to talk. He tells Guy he loves his daughter intensely and will do anything to protect Raina from unscrupulous, shady suitors. He shows Guy a dossier on his life, labeled Confidential Report, where Guy's many previous run-ins with the law and other unflattering facts are detailed. Guy is not intimidated but challenges Arkadin instead, claiming that if someone were to investigate Arkadin in a similar way, plenty of dirt would show up, and he himself would not look good.After an instant of reflection, Arkadin offers Guy a deal, that he investigate Arkadin's past and prepare a confidential report on him. Arkadin claims he had amnesia and knows nothing about his own life up to the time when he found himself wandering in Zurich during the winter of 1927 carrying a briefcase with 200,000 Swiss Francs. After some arguing, Arkadin agrees to pay expenses plus fifteen thousand dollars at the conclusion.Raina comes into the bedroom, and asks questions. In the upshot, Arkadin promises not to interfere with Guy's relationship with Raina as part of the deal.With the names and the year 1927 as the only clues, Guy seeks out people who might have some knowledge of Arkadins life. First, The Professor (Mischa Auer) a tall, cadaverous, impoverished Russian owner of a flea circus, who sits alone in a tiny room caring for the repulsive insects, feeding them on his own thin arm, and looks attentively through a large magnifying glass at the probing investigator. Next, a very eccentric antique dealer (Michael Redgrave) scrabbling about an enormous shop filled with junk, authentic and fake. Finally a bookmaker, who gives him the crucial name of a Baroness Nagel who runs a boutique in Paris and might know something.Arkadin not only has periodic contacts with Guy but also has his network of informers reporting Guy's activities. Arkadin arranges a dinner with Baroness Nagel (Suzanne Flon) in which he finds out that the baroness used to work undercover for the Warszaw police and that she was instrumental in disbanding the prostitution and white slavery operation of a certain Sophie, whom she recognized years later as a customer that came into her Paris boutique. Sophie travels to Paris every year for purchases in her shop, from her home in Mexico, where she lives with her now husband, a General Martinez.In the meantime, Mily has been with Arkadin on his boat. Acting on her own, she reveals to Arkadin some of what she knows from her contacts with Guy, in a scene in the rocking boat. She is stumbling around the room, giggling and taunting Arkadin as the camera captures the rocking of the boat and mirrors the shakiness of her drunken state.Guy finds Sophie's first husband, Oscar, a drug addict, living on a small boat. But Oscar gives no useful information despite Guy's maintaining him in withdrawal symptoms until he talks.The mystery of Arkadin's early life is resolved in Guy's meeting with Sophie (Katina Paxinou) in Mexico. She had led a criminal gang in Warsaw in the old days together with Arkadin,. With Brocco, Oscar, Jacob Zouk, they ran a white slavery racket out of a dance studio, using poor and naive girls wanting to become ballet dancers as prostitutes. When the operation was broken up by the police the group was run out of Poland, with Arkadin ending up in Switzerland in the winter of 1927. Sophie admits she was madly in love with Arkadin. He was then Arthur Bahzi and shows Guy photographs to prove it. She says that the two hundred thousand Swiss Francs were hers and that he disappeared with them. Later in life she recognized him at a casino where he was having a good run. Unknown to him, she bet on his numbers and made a small fortune that made up for the stolen money, with interest, so she saw no reason to stir trouble, and decided to leave him be.Guy receives a call from Arkadin, who, it turns out, is staying at the same hotel in Mexico. Guy reports some of what he knows and says he is returning to Europe to meet with Jakob Zouk, the last member of the group, who has just come out of jail in Munich.Before Munich, Guy meets Raina. Meanwhile, Arkadin is back and there is another lavish party . Guy asks about Mily, and Arkadins staff show him a police document -- it seems that Mily has drowned off the coast of Mexico. Guy gets a sinking feeling, asks to call Sophie, but finds that she, too, is dead, as well as Oscar.Guy then realizes that all of Arkadins old gang are being murdered, one after another, that Jakob Zouk is next, and that Mily was murdered because she knew some things, so he will be murdered last, to ensure there will be none to talk of Arkadin's earlier life of crime. Raina will thus be protected from potential blackmailers, from those who might have a moral claim on the fortune built from the stolen 200 thousand Swiss Francs, and her opinion of her father will be untainted by knowledge of his sordid past..Guy, in a panic with the conviction that he's last on the murder list, as insurance for his own life, rushes to Munich to find Jakob Zouk (Akim Tamiroff), the last member of the gang, to hide him to keep him alive. Guy finds Zouk on Christmas eve, a decrepit old man shivering in a garret, with his memories almost totally gone, and unable to react to warnings that he may be killed. Zouk insists he won't say anything unless he gets his Christmas meal of goose liver with mashed potatoes and apples and onions. When Guy returns with such a meal, which he gets through the inflluence of Arkadin, he finds Zouk dead.Guy now expects to be arrested by the Munich police for murder. He has a chance to stay free and alive only by telling Raina about her father's past before the Arkadin organization can stop him with his own death. He attempts to lose Arkadin by mingling with a Christmas service crowd in a large church. Somehow he makes it to the airport to get on a plane flying back to Madrid with a stop in Barcelona.Arkadin follows him, there are no more seats in the plane, and no passengers are tempted by his last minute offer of large amounts of money to relinquish one seat. Guy gets on the plane while Arkadin fumes at the airport.Arkadin secures another airplane, which he flies, trying to beat Guy. By only a few moments, Guy gets to Raina first, and tricks Raina into telling her father by radio, while he is still on the plane, that he has talked to Guy and that he is too late, even though Guy has revealed no details as yet. The radio goes silent.Raina realizes that the phrase too late has triggered her fathers suicide, and she leaves the airport in the company of her previous suitor, the Marquess of Rutleigh.

Tags: cult, suspenseful, murder, flashback

Review:
I've always liked Orson Welle's "Mr Arkadin." At least I've been compelled to watch it an awful lot of times, in any case.
This is yet another film Welles made that was taken from him during the editing stages by the people putting up the money.Until the recent release of the exhaustive Criterion "Complete Mr. Arkadin" DVD set, all I had to go on were tapes and discs of various, beat up public domain versions and a nice Janus tape of the "Confidential Report" version that is widely known to be a re-edit of Welles' "original" cut.
Interestingly if you watch Laserlight's release of the American 'no flashbacks' version you can catch bits of this original dialog (why wasn't that version included in Criterion's 'Complete' set?).I think that Welles came up with the flashback idea well after principal photography was finished and then had Arden dub in different lines to make the flashback format work.
2) There was a rather involved scene showing Zouk actually being released from prison (in the released version, we are just told that this happened in dialog).If this account of what must have been one of the first public showings of any version of "Arkadin" is true, that also says to me that Welles was compulsively noodling around with the film, changing it, rearranging it, cutting it to bits, well before his backers took it away from him and edited it themselves.
I think that one of two things would have had to have happened for there to have ever actually been a true "final cut": 1) Welles would have had to accept collaborators to help him decide when to quit editing (as he had during "Kane" with Mankiewicz and Houseman) or 2) he would have had to have been given as much time as he wanted to edit.
Guy (the Harry Lime character is renamed "Guy van Stratten" and is played by Robert Arden) finds it most pleasant to investigate Arkadin though his lovely daughter Raina (all of Paola Mori's dialogue was dubbed by Billie Whitelaw and Marlene Dietrich turned down the role), her father's idol.
Excellent acting by the maestro Orson Welles playing the life of yet another ruthless millionaire, he stars a famed tycoon with a shady past , similarly to Citizen Kane .
It stars newcomers actors , as the credits read "And introducing Paola Mori" who married Orson Welles ; however, she had been in at least four films prior to this ; the credits also imply the "And introducing" refers to Robert Arden as well, who also had had at least two credited big screen performances .
Good support cast as Michael Redgrave as Burgomil , Patricia Medina as Mily , Akim Tamiroff as Jakob Zouk , Mischa Auer , Amparo Rivelles , Katina Paxinou as Sophie , Grégoire Aslan as Bracco , Peter van Eyck as Thaddeus and Suzanne Flon as Baroness Nagel ; but even the efforts of a cool cast couldn't help Welles turn this into a critical or commercial success .
It has recently released a comprehensive three-DVD set of the film, featuring three versions: the "Corinth" version¨ that was generally regarded closest to Orson Welles's cut, "Confidential Report" or European cut, and the newly edited "Comprehensive" version.
Atmospheric and evocative musical score by Paul Misraki .Mr. Arkadin also titled Confidential Report was well directed by Orson Welles , a genius who had a large and problematic career .
Scenes never give the impression of ending, everything is done in overdrive, people are constantly looming, dizzyingly moving in and out of shot; the grotesquerie of the bad acting rhymes with the grotesquerie of the costume set pieces and with that of the B movie Euro - freak character actors parading, one by one, in front of the camera for their star turns.
The story follows a small-time blackmailer named Guy Van Stratten (Arden) who meets and falls in love with Raina Arkadin (Paola Mori, who was Welles' third wife), who is resistant of his love for her at first.
I felt like I was watching a Federico Fellini film, directed by Orson Welles.
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...
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.
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.
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.
But I have entertained the notion that I like Mr. Arkadin (also called Confidential Report, sometimes) as much as I do because it so completely betrays Welles as a titanic artist having to deal with the small frustrations and vicissitudes of Everyman.
It's almost as if someone had taken Citizen Kane and the Mask of Demitrios shoved them in a blender then tried to make a coherent film out of the bits while under the influence of heavy medication.And somehow it works - but only just.If you haven't watched this film yet and are contemplating doing so I will warn you that Robert Arden's 100% subtlety free performance is incredibly bad and his character (Guy Van Stratten) has to carry the first part of the movie almost alone.
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.
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.
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.
Kudos to Peter Boganovich for his involvement.Other than "Citizen Kane", most of Welles' films were botched up either by his own financial problems, Studio interference or just just plain weird bad luck.
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..
I'm a big fan of Orson Welles and have recently watched the new Criterion release of Mr Arkadin the Corinth version as well as the new Confidential Report and was somewhat disappointed.
Modern films are also re-recorded but they add room tone to prevent the sterile sound that plagues Arkadin.Photography: The film has generally good photography but Welles use of weird angles distracts from the story rather than enhancing it.
The footage of the airplane shown at the start of the film is covered by dirt on the lens on within the gate of the camera.Production Design: Welles has very busy backgrounds shown in many scenes and with the use of deep focus causes a distraction rather than enhance the story.
Welles seems to be an excellent screenplay writer and editor but perhaps a bit weak when it comes to content creation.Acting: the actors who played Guy (Robert Arden) and Millie (Patricia Medina) were poorly cast for their parts.
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).
For a great movie experience look again at Citizen Kane - then consider that a young Orson, first time movie maker, was blessed with some of the finest creative film talent in the world to teach and carry him over the bumps...
Defying All Reasonable Recitation, This Film is Another of Welles Extravagances that Spun Out of His Control in Post Production and Manifested a Life of its Own. Trying to Discern What it Was Supposed to Be or What it Is, for that Matter, is the Stuff of Scholarly Pursuits, Doctoral Thesis, and Criterion Collections.The Casual Film Buff Venturing Into Welles World, Especially His Late Term Efforts, is Likely to be Chewed Up, Spit Out, and Sent Sliding Into Incomprehensible Mutterings and a Desire for Firmer Ground.Solid Footing is Fleeting when it comes to Mr. Arkadin.
Orson Welles was a Magician, a Curmudgeon, a Tinkerer, and a Tailor of Film that Loved to Play with His Craft Endlessly Until All Reason was Ripped This Way and That and Then Back Again.Few Knew or Have Been Able to Penetrate the Mind of this Filmmaker and Come Up with Anything Coherent or Understandable (a description of Arkadin), Although Mr. Bogdanovich and Others Certainly Gave it the Old College Try. Therein Lies the Endless Fascination with Orson Welles.
It also, at times, feels like a Frankenstein picture - that is, themes and styles from Welles' other films seem balled together to make Mr. Arkadin.
The basic story is as follows: a small-time blackmailer named Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) is hired by the mysterious billionaire Gregory Arkadin to research his past.
Even the inherent beauty of an Orson Welles film and an interesting story can't overcome bad editing, terrible pacing, sub par acting and an awful dub.
The last quarter of the film in particular includes some actions by both Arkadin and Van Stratten that seem maddeningly incomprehensible, as well as a five-minute-long segment consisting almost entirely of a minor character repeatedly asking for goose liver.I would recommend watching The Lady From Shanghai instead of this for a film with similar themes that works despite even more pronounced attempts by the studio to butcher Welles' work..
ARKADIN is an Orson Welles film.
The only sure thing is that somehow most of those participating in his past end up murdered.The film had a troubled "making of" background story, and is one of those European productions Welles made and had trouble getting financial backing for distribution which took quite a bit of time.There's a touch of CITIZEN KANE to the story idea and a bit of THE THIRD MAN in the noirish B&W photography, but none of it really makes a lot of sense and some perfectly good actors turn up in oddbeat roles and disappear again.Only for true Welles fans who must see everything the master did, whether good, bad or indifferent.
Van Stratten, a hood, and a woman, Mily, do just that, and Van Stratten meets and later falls in love with Arkadin's daughter (played by Welles' third wife, Paola Mori) and gets inside the man's home and life.
Arkadin claims amnesia and hires Van Stratten to find out about his past for him.This is a good story in a problematic film.
Welles himself plays Arkadin, and it's a broad performance we're used to seeing when, frankly, he's phoning it in, which he did here as he was busy with everything else involved in the movie."Mr. Arkadin" looks like a student film, but it has some wonderful moments, both frightening and funny.
It's like a Mad Magazine parody of "Citizen Kane" crossed with "The Third Man" as Robert Arden darts around the world trying to piece together the life of Welles' mysterious billionaire.
This is a film for Orson Wells fans and filmmakers.Don't press the pause button, to go to the frig, or you might not bother to resume play.A cross between Citizen Kane and Joe McDoaks, as in "So you want to be a Private Eye".
It might make more sense on a second viewing, but the movie did not engage me enough to have the slightest interest in doing that.Robert Arden is particularly wooden as the guy looking into Mr. Arkadan's past and Welles plays Arkadan with over-inflated seriousness.
I recommend any cinephile or Welles enthusiast pick up Criterion's commendable "Complete Mr. Arkadin" (which includes the cinema release, the Corinth version (often preferred) and a new comprehensive restoration (my personal favorite)).Mr. Arkadin, hugely entertaining and a marvel in its own right, further cements the following solid fact: Orson Welles was one of the greatest film auteurs of all time..
Mr. Arkadin, one of the very few works by Welles that was not an adaptation (he also wrote a book version of it before-hand, a book I'd love to read to compare), is a mystery that made me feel as if I understood everything and nothing about the lead character by the time the film ended.
Robert Ardin plays Guy Van Stratten, an "adventurer" who stumbles upon a dying man's last words (no, not rosebud, but the Kane connection is intriguing) as being Arkadin, and a woman.
In this film, Orson Welles,(Gregory Arkadin),"Butterfly",'82, plays a very rich mysterious man who has problems trying to remember the past and is extremely devoted to his daughter.
I saw the one titled 'Confidential Report.' This film was adapted from the Orson Welles written script 'A Man of Mystery' that aired in April of 1952 as a 30 minute episode of the radio play series 'The Lives of Harry Lime.' Welles expanded his story for the film and his friend Muarice Bessy translated it into a novel.
In the film Welles changed the Harry Lime character to Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) who, as a cigarette smuggler encounters a dying murder victim, a Naples blackmailer named Bracco (Grégoiré Aslan).
Van Stratten befriends Arkadin's daughter Raina (Paola Mori) and he gets to meet the mysterious millionaire Gregory Arkadin (Orson Welles) who hires him to research his past.
After having made what was almost immediately recognized as a masterpiece and one of the best movies in the history of cinema, all other films that came later where compared to that very high threshold.'Confidential Report' does not come dangerously close, but yet is a film that brings back a lot of memories of Kane, first by having Welles himself cast as the principal mystery and evil character of the film.
***SPOILERS*** Orson Wells sporting the beard that he became so well known for in the last decades of his life is the mysterious Mister Arkadin in the 1955 movie with the same name.
"Mr. Arkadin" and "Citizen Kane" were both, in simplest terms, about the search to uncover the past of a tycoonThe film is regarded merely as a highly-colored, larger-than-life, more-exciting-than-life piece of entertaining suspense The story is basically about Arkadin hiring a young American to uncover forgotten events in his early life Only later did the American realize that, as he tracked down the people who knew the secrets of Arkadin's hidden past, the financier was having them murdered one by one, and intended at the end to have his own investigator murdered too so that the trail he had uncovered would be destroyed for ever But all this was simply a thread on which to hang the ornate jewels of those characters Mischa Auer, the tall, cadaverous, impoverished Russian owner of a Copenhagen flea circus, sitting alone in a tiny room with the repulsive insects which are the only creatures for which he cares, feeding them on his own thin arm, looking attentively with huge distorted eye through a large magnifying glass at the probing investigator Akim Tamiroff, starving in Munich as a neglected-looking beggar willing to trade his secrets for a mealKatina Paxinou, the ruthless woman who had run a criminal gang in Europe and now lived on her fortune in Mexico And Michael Redgrave, an unsuccessful dealer, scrabbling about his shop filled with antique junk Such characters project the suspense of which entertainment is made.
Firstly, some administration issues: like most Orson Welles projects, 'Mr. Arkadin (1955)' suffered from studio interference in post- production, and so there are numerous versions of the film available for public viewing.
The film's most interesting sequence is an early costume ball in which guests are hidden behind grotesque masks, whose massive features crowd the frame like the creatures from Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are." Though it is Welles' presence that dominates the screen, Robert Arden is an intriguing noir protagonist: Guy Van Stratten is a small-time smuggler (once again drawing a parallel with Harry Lime) who epitomises the petty crook that Arkadin once was.
The film is more disturbing than really thrilling and Orson Welles probably wanted it like that, mysterious, embarrassing and disquieting, but what's the next stop in the plot, sir?