Mr. Arkadin (1955)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Prior to becoming a multimillionaire, the title character was the leader of an infamous gang in pre-WWII Poland. He hires an opportunist-drifter who breaks into his house to find out about his past, saying he has amnesia and can't remember anything, not even his real name.Sound intriguing? You bet. An interesting story? well, semi-interesting. It's festooned with plot holes and poor continuity, sorely in need of an editor. Plus, the main character represents what may be the worst casting job in the long history of Motion Pictures. His name is Robert Arden. Ever hear of him? Thought not. He was, in a word, dreadful. No subtlety, no nuance and wrecked this picture almost singlehandedly.Everybody wants to give Orson Welles and his genius their due. I think that is the main reason for many reviewers overrating this picture, and some of his genius is on display here, in fits and starts. Too often, however, his genius manifests itself in brief outbursts of megalomania as he postures and glowers before the camera in one of his too-frequent close-ups.The supporting cast ranges from excellent to superb, led by Akim Tamiroff and Katina Paxinou, both of whom had too brief appearances before the camera. As I said, there are flashes of brilliance, but not enough to pull this film up to a respectable rating. This is a seriously flawed movie.

A film typical of 1955, the very heart of the Cold War. Orson Welles though manages to write a book and then make a film that exposes one of these rich men after WW2 who made a fortune during and after the war, and yet he succeeds in hardly mentioning the defeated side of that war who were the main customers and who knows what too of these men who came rich out of the war. We jump from Italy, to Spain, from Germany to England, from France to Poland and we only know that fishy people were used to accumulate that fortune and were eliminated for the police not to trace them to the order giver. After the war that Mr. Arkadin hires some kind of international private eye adventurer to find out what is being said about him in Europe. His real intention is to trace those who could be embarrassing if they started talking and then he eliminates them one after the other. The private eye has only one objective: to capture the love of the daughter of this rich man. Not simple, indeed. And the end is just fishy and unimaginable. The rotten rich man disappears in thin air over the communication system of an airport air control tower: he is speaking one second and he is gone the next and the plane he was coming in crashes and no body is in it. The private eye can go away with the rich daughter but does it mean it is finished. Of course not. These war time entrepreneurs are extremely good at disappearing to reappear later on with a good amount of money they had manage to store away in some Swiss safe heaven. 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? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

I recently saw this film on a PBS station and it was a bad, fuzzy and grainy print. I understand that there were at least five and possibly six different versions of this film released in Europe and America. 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). With Van Stratten is his dancer girlfriend Milly (Patricia Medina) and as his dying breath Bracco whispers in Milly's ear two names; Arkadin and Sophie. 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. Arkadin claims to have no memory prior to 1927 when he found himself in Zürich with 200,000 Francs in his pocket. In the nearly 30 years since he used that money to build his financial empire now worth $100,000,000. He has become an eccentric tycoon hiding from his past who refuses to be photographed and wears a cartoonish disguise of a fake beard, hairpiece, nose and eyebrows giving him the appearance of the mythical King Neptune of the sea. He is like a combination of what Howard Hughes and Michael Jackson would become in power, reclusiveness, eccentricity and altered appearance. He is also fiercely protective of his daughter and harbors an almost incestuous feeling for her. Van Stratten sets out on a globe trotting journey to find Sophie (Katrina Paxinou) to put together pieces of Arkadin's past. He investigates various people with a shady past linked to Arkadin. A contraband dealer in Tangiers (Peter Van Eyck), a flea circus operator in Denmark (Mischa Auer), an antique dealer in Amsterdam (Michael Redgrave), a tailor in Zurich (Akim Tamroff) and in Mexico, a heroin addict (Frédrik O'Brady) and Sophie herself. It's a great international cast of actors which also includes Terence Longdon, Suzanne Flon and Jack Whatling with rich, memorable characters full of mystery, mayhem, murder and dark humor. It features great set decoration from two time Oscar winner for 'Patton' and 'Nicholas and Alexandra' Gil Parrando with Welles overseeing the art direction and costuming as well as being the films star, writer and director. Interesting cinematography in its lighting and camera angles from the lens of Oscar winner for 'The Longest Day' France's Jean Bourgoin. filmed in 1954, the overbooked Welles left production before the final edits to work on two other films. Producer Louis Dolivet, frustrated on the delay to get a finished project released, cut Welles loose and had it edited and released in different forms for different international markets contrary to what Welles would have edited and released as a finished product. The result is a strange film with flashes of Welles genius and remnants of 'Citizen Kane' and 'The Third Man' and a combination of 1940's American Film Noir and 1950's French cinema. In the film I saw some scenes are badly overdubbed and audibly out of sync among its many flaws. Arden is miscast in a lead role and Mori is weak in a supporting but pivotal role but the other characters are so interesting and plentiful and performed very well. The film gets a boost from its music score by Paul Misraki. I'd like to see the better version of this film that was culled from three of the existing versions and would recommend looking for that but whatever version it remains a must see film and would give the one I saw an 8.5 out of 10.

One of the big problems of Orson Welles career as a director is to have made Citizen Kane so early. 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. It is unfortunately that the second main character in the film was not chosen to be an actor to match Welles. Robert Arden is far from being a memorable face or actor, and it is rather the other supporting characters that look much more interesting on screen. What we get beyond is one of the first international intrigue films in a genre that will make the James Bond series adored by crowds later, but filmed in an exquisite style by Welles and set in the post-war Europe and Mexico. Almost every scene is filmed from surprising angles, and is worth being enjoyed as a piece of art by itself. Does this look mannerist, maybe? Does it bother the viewer who just wants to enjoy an action film? I do not think so. Is it beautiful? Yes, it is beautiful in a cinematographic way, and this is what counts in my opinion.