One of my favorite people to read about and watch is Orson Welles. So I watched "Mr. Akadin," or "Confidential Report," as it is sometimes known, with great interest. By 1955, Welles was a Hollywood outsider, the great years behind him. He made films on a shoestring and hired himself out to get money to complete them. The most heartbreaking part of one of his biographies is the story of Welles having dinner with Spielberg, hoping the dynamic director could help him get a distributor for his latest movie. But Spielberg only wanted to talk about the past, about the legendary Orson Welles. No one would help him, not Warren Beatty, no one.
"Mr. Arkadin" is the story of a man, Guy Van Stratten, who runs around the world on the basis of a few words heard as a man is dying, words, the man assures him, that are worth millions. Just seek out Mr. Arkadin and mention Bracco and Sophie. 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. There are the Welles touches of the odd camera angles and special lighting, but the film is disconcerting because the dubbing is way off - I at first thought it had been made in another language. Also, some of the acting is just horrible, particularly from Patricia Medina (Mily) and Robert Arden (Van Stratten). However, Welles assembled a brilliant group of foreign character actors for the other roles - Akim Tamirof, Gert Frobe, Michael Redgrave, Mischa Auer, Katina Paxinou - incredible, and they probably did their roles as favors for Welles for very little. 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. A Welles film is always worth seeing even if it doesn't always exactly hit the mark. And he hit the mark so many times - you never know when something he did is going to turn into a masterpiece.
"Mr. Arkadin" is the story of a man, Guy Van Stratten, who runs around the world on the basis of a few words heard as a man is dying, words, the man assures him, that are worth millions. Just seek out Mr. Arkadin and mention Bracco and Sophie. 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. There are the Welles touches of the odd camera angles and special lighting, but the film is disconcerting because the dubbing is way off - I at first thought it had been made in another language. Also, some of the acting is just horrible, particularly from Patricia Medina (Mily) and Robert Arden (Van Stratten). However, Welles assembled a brilliant group of foreign character actors for the other roles - Akim Tamirof, Gert Frobe, Michael Redgrave, Mischa Auer, Katina Paxinou - incredible, and they probably did their roles as favors for Welles for very little. 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. A Welles film is always worth seeing even if it doesn't always exactly hit the mark. And he hit the mark so many times - you never know when something he did is going to turn into a masterpiece.