I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Simply Perfect

A lot of fun.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Interesting but odd film about an amnesiac millionaire financier who hires an investigator to find his past . Screenwriter , filmmaker , star Welles adopting from his own novel and directing this strange flick , thematically similar to Citizen Kane . The novel and the screenplay were both based on an episode in the radio series, "The Lives of Harry Lime", in which Welles played his Harry Lime character as rather less villainous that he was in The third man . It deals with an American adventurer who investigates the past of mysterious tycoon Arkadin (Orson Welles) placing himself in grave danger . 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. However Stratton learns that all the persons he asked about Arkadin are getting killed. Guy follows the descending and intriguing trail to a surprise final .This suspense movie contains intrigue , thrills , plot twists and layered dialog prevail . 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 . Filmed over two years around Europe , required seven years of post production , before finding distribution in 1962 . 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. Each version contains a few shots or lines that are missing from the other two. Because the film was taken out of Welles' control in post-production, we will never know exactly what he had in mind for the complex flashback structure he spoke of later in his life. Mr. Arkadin was created from three episodes of the 1951-1952 radio program, The Lives of Harry Lime: Man of Mystery , Murder on the Rivera and Blackmail Is an Ugly Word. Arkadin is based mostly on the first of the three and centered on a character named Gregory Arkadian , primary characters and set-ups are taken from the other two episodes . Good cinematography in black and white by Jean Burgoin , as in Citizen Kane is plenty of oblique camera angles . 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 . In 1938 he produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" . His first film to be seen by the public was Ciudadano Kane (1941), a commercial failure , but regarded by many as the best film ever made , along with his following movie , The magnificent Ambersons . He subsequently directed Shakespeare adaptation such as Macbeth , Othelo and Chimes at Midnight or Falstaff . Many of his next films were commercial flops and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948. In 1956 he directed Touch of evil (1958); it failed in the U.S. but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office flops , he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984 the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a film maker has climbed steadily ever since.

After an extremely pretentious opening quote, followed by an opening curio about an empty airplane, the story gets rolling as a very talky palooka (some b-movie star) shows up in an attic with great urgency to entreat a man to exit the premises fast, because a third man is coming to kill him. Then he launches into a very long, convoluted explanation (none of which is interesting) of the story so far, which goes on and on and on ...one wonders where the killer is. This crappy device eats up half the movie! The story drags on so long that the would-be savior, when interrupted, barks at the attic-dweller, "I'll tell the story my own way!!" Oh there's time for a whole 'story,' is there? Directness and urgency are not qualities found in Mr. Arkadin, The Stranger, Touch of Evil, Lady from Shanghai, etc., In Arkadin (as in most Welles movies including Kane and the Third Man) he plays the amoral heavy, the climax usually coming when he belatedly explains his outsider philosophy.Mr Arkadin doesn't work. It's worse than incoherent, it's a dumb, showy movie. Welles understands everything about film-making, and nothing about narrative structure. He is so anxious to make every single moment filmic that any larger goal is lost. He will always sacrifice the overall movie in favor of a pile of virtuoso moments that don't assemble; and his drama is limited to unaffecting histrionics. Everything is visually striking but nothing is meaningful; the scenes don't add up to a coherent movie, and the shots don't add up to coherent scenes. More is more with Welles, and if it's visually slick, it must be the right choice. Can you find the through-line in this Mannerist mess? And if you can, do you care about any of it? Does it engage your mind, or just your eyes? In aiming high, Welles neglects the basics about what choices might make a movie stupid. Every development that's supposed to deepen the story instead deepens the nonsense. He does himself no favors with his preference for pointlessly elaborate, antiquated plots. He seems to buy his plot by the pound. The movie shoots itself in the foot three or four times a minute; sometimes by piling genre clichés on top of genre clichés; sometimes from craving another prettily composed shot of something (cue the castle!). The movie is packed with inept, eye-rolling unsubtle-ties.Frequently out of necessity, but just as likely due to lack of discipline, Welles treats film as a medium he can re-conceive after it's in the can. It's an odd, intriguing approach; but all of his movies end up as chaotic and uninteresting as Arkadin, despite continually striking camera work. Arkadin is definitely a title to rent (and important to know about) but it defies engagement. It's a shame he never bothered to write anything coherent after 1942, which to me, only supports the now disfavored Pauline Kael position that Welles could not have written the uncluttered, disciplined Citizen Kane.

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.

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT (or MR. ARKADIN) has (if you look at the background notes) a complex history. It is supposedly based on a novel by Welles, which was actually written by a "ghost" writer, but it was then based on characters and situations from Welles' radio series as Harry Lime (based on the movie by Graham Greene and Sir Carol Reed - THE THIRD MAN), and then it has striking similarities to the basic structure of CITIZEN KANE (a wealthy powerful man is investigated by a reporter). As strip by strip this has been taken apart, older critiques are shown wanting. Peter Cowie's essay on the film in his book THE CINEMA OF ORSON WELLES is a pretty good one, given how poor the film versions were back in the 1970s, but he believed Welles wrote the book. Let's start from a point Cowie brought up - Arkadin may be based on figures like Sir Basil Zaharoff (the munitions dealer, known as "the Merchant of Death). One he mentions was Alfred Loewenstein, who I mentioned referring to two other films (SUCH MEN ARE DANGEROUS and GILDA) due to the interesting way he died - he fell out of his private airplane into the English Channel in 1928, and the exact reasons have never been settled satisfactorily - see the book THE MAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY for the best discussion of the mystery). Thus the plane without a pilot is not as odd an opening as presented (although Loewenstein's staff and pilot were still in the plane when it finally landed). Starting from there the film does look like KANE, except in the exact details. For one thing, Charles Foster Kane died before the reporter is sent to investigate his life - and the scandals that crop up, or failings, or successes are well known to the public. But Kane, for all his failings, is part of the American power circle and social scene. Arkadin is a would-be billionaire too, but he does not make his fortune from mining, real estate, and newspapers, but from dealing with opportunists around the globe (we learn he sold defective military equipment to the Italians in the late 1930s). He has more of a hit-and-run type of approach that Kane (who barely cared for his fortune) never had - at one point he calls up his minions to "Buy Copper", which by the way is not as simplistic an order as one critic suggests (not Cowie) but exactly what someone like Arkadin would say to his minions after discussing the matter with them before.The original KANE screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz had a sequence in which Kane killed a man over Susan Alexander. This was based on the rumor (still debated, possibly unfairly) that William Randolph Hearst shot Thomas Ince on his yacht. Welles took this out of that script except for a bit about Raymond the butler knowing where all the bodies were buried. This is actually an improvement on that script, as Charles Kane's failings don't really seem to include a desire for corpses.Kane's tragedy is that he is desperately trying to be everything to everyone and yet remain his own master. His character is one of the most complex in American films (at least up to 1941 - possibly up to 2007). Arkadin's tragedy is a realization he is a creature of the nightmare world - a scorpion - desperate to make his daughter's world better at all cost. But if he is from the gutter, what if his former associates try to blackmail her? What would she think of him by their revelations? Charley Kane lost his normal growing up when his mother did what she mistakenly thought was smart: take him away from his drunken father and give him all the warmth of Thatcher's bank. Gregory Arkadin left the slime of the European swamplands for the grandeur of international finance and castles in Spain, and a British Marquis fiancé for his Raina, always aware that if your base was a swamp you can still fall back into it.So there are differences in the two figures as well as similarities. I first saw ARKADIN in 1973 on late night television. The version I saw apparently was the horribly botched cut version of the distributors in the U.S. in the 1950s where sequences flew about without keeping the rhythm of the film or it's sound track in tact (best example: this version has Van Stratton trying to get information out of Oscar (O'Brady - Sophie's husband) while denying him drugs on a boat - but we are shown the latter before we see the boat where this is going on!). I was impressed at sequences with Mischa Auer and Michael Redgrave, and that was about it. Since then more complete versions have turned up on video which make more sense. It's not in the front rank of Welles' best (KANE, AMBERSOMS, MACBETH, OTHELLO, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, TOUCH OF EVIL - maybe THE TRIAL) but it holds up as well as say LADY FROM SHANGHAI or THE STRANGER. The worst thing is the vagueness of the sound, (a problem of all of Welles' independent productions in Europe). I think it is definitely worth watching, but certainly not in that grotesque 1950s American version.