GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Lawbolisted Powerful

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

SnoopyStyle American Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) smuggled cigarettes in Europe. He encounters murdered Bracco at the docks who whispers two valuable names to Mily. She revealed one name Gregory Arkadin (Orson Welles) to everybody while Guy is arrested for smuggling. He uses Arkadin's daughter Raina to get to her father. Mily says the second name is a woman's but she'd forgotten and later remembered as Sophie something. Guy tries to blackmail Arkadin. Arkadin hires him to recover his past prior to 1927 and claims to have amnesia.I like the premise and I like the first half. Orson Welles is putting in all of his style into this movie. The story does take a lot of twists and turns. Honestly, I'm lost half of the time trying to figure out who's who in this movie. It's convoluted and confusing. The overall effect is a nightmarish tone in a Kafkaesque world.

ackstasis 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. Among the possible options is the chronologically-cut print released in America, the European cut retitled "Confidential Report," and several versions released by the Criterion Collection that purport to represent, to varying degrees, Welles' original vision. For my first viewing of the film, I watched the version titled "Confidential Report," which can be found on a VHS released by distributor Connoisseur Video. The flashback structure maintained in most prints of the film, including this version, deliberately recalls the American film noir style. Of course, this comes as no surprise – Welles had already released 'The Stranger (1946)' and 'The Lady from Shanghai (1947),' and would soon return to Hollywood (albeit briefly) to direct his archetypal noir, 'Touch of Evil (1958).' But Orson Welles was not one to do things by the book, and 'Mr. Arkadin' is like no American noir you've ever seen.If one must choose a film with which to compare 'Mr. Arkadin,' it would probably be Carol Reed's 'The Third Man (1949).' Both pictures transplant a familiar film noir plot into a European setting, and an eccentric camera captures the personality of the exotic locales and their inhabitants. Both, of course, also starred Orson Welles in a prominent role, and playing analogous characters. In Reed's film, Harry Lime is a smug, boyish racketeer whose thirst for ill-gotten profits takes priority over the faceless victims of his black-market crimes. Gregory Arkadin might be considered an extension of Lime's character, had he emerged unscathed from the Vienna sewers and lived years more. Arkadin is undoubtedly a criminal, but one whose incredible success has pushed him beyond such a characterisation. Despite having apparently eluded his youthful years in petty crime (after erasing his former identity, much as Lime attempted), Arkadin remains plagued by the shame of his past, unwilling to acknowledge that he is just as contemptible now as he ever was.Despite the thematic influence of American cinema, Welles' direction, stylistically, more closely resembles the work of European artists like Federico Fellini. His dynamic camera-work and editing has an air of improvisation, and a certain flamboyance that might seem overindulgent if it weren't so brilliantly effortless. 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. Infatuated with nothing but money and self- preservation, Stratten continually exploits the affections of girlfriend Mily (Patricia Medina) and Arkadin's daughter Raina (Paola Mori). He destroys the lives of both women, and, unremorsefully, manages to save his own neck; Gregory Arkadin isn't the only villain on this cluttered continent.

tedg The way I watch films involves a lot of invention. Usually it is in cahoots with the filmmaker, elaborating where he or she would have me.Sometimes it is freed from the images, when they are inadequate or point to external context. But with some Welles projects things are about as perfect as it gets because you know what he would do and didn't, or did and it was undone. By that measure, this is perhaps the greatest Welles film. Its like his radio dramas on which it is based: he gives you something and you fill in the rest with your imagination.But here, the filling in has to do with all the time-shifting the man would have us do. If the main engine for narrative slicing in "Kane" was how a character makes his own story, here it is how a character discovers his. For you to understand my meaning you have to know the story. Spoilers here:One man hires another to discover his past because he cannot recall. Toward the end in all the versions we have, it becomes clear that there never was any memory loss. The rich fellow merely wanted his detective to find out who could reveal his past so that they could be killed. I am certain the Welles intended this to be more ambiguous, and for the man in question — played by Welles — to be unsure what was recalled, invented by himself, invented by the (untrusted) narrator, invented by the witnesses, true.That's why he planned flashbacks within flashbacks, flashbacks that overlapped and contradicted, that went backwards and sometimes forward (remembering forward). Its why he had multiple narrators overlapping the same events. The anchor in this was the character of his daughter played by his them wife. At this time they were passionately involved and indeed she became pregnant during filming. She was the one that mattered, our designated watcher. So the filmmaker-lover dynamic takes a particularly dense narrative braid here, with sex offscreen mattering as much as all the other things we don't see in the story.Along the way, the shots are more adventuresome than in Kane and many of them as radical as "Evil." Imagine the edit as convoluted and dense as "F for Fake."!I am pretty sure that the sequence at the end was intended to be toward the middle. This is an amazing film experience if you can watch it and construct the possibilities in your own eye, like the detective character.I would list it on my best list, but I only allow myself 2 from any filmmaker, and his 2 slots are taken. But you really should see this, probably in the "comprehensive" version. Its the structure determined by others but with more bits. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

emwolf There's just something about Orson Welles behind a camera (as well as in front). I saw this movie years ago on a public television station. The print was pathetic, however you could still pick out the extreme angles, deep focus, layered soundtrack and quirky characters that are the Wellesian touch.I recently purchased the Criterion set and was absolutely delighted. The back story of just about any Welles movie is generally at least as exciting as the movie itself, and this one is a doozy.I was watching one of the versions with my wife last year and she asked what year it was made. I think that Welles was perpetually about 50 years ahead of the curve. This is why his movies have a tremendous audience and respect now.