A realization (and a confession) about Arkadin

[Terry]

One thing about Welles, and maybe it's what killed him commercially, is that his characters are rarely sympathetic and sometimes aren't even likable.

Charlie Kane is a great young guy but becomes a bitter old shell long before the end; getting back to the fun factor, while Kane wows me technically, the main character is one I really don't like - so Kane isn't enjoyable overall. The technical near-perfection, impressive as it is, isn't enough.

Ambersons is about the most hateful Welles character. I like Tim Holt in every other film I've seen, but Georgie is such a hateful monster from start to finish that Ambersons is another trip I don't want to take.

Howard Graham is such an absurd boob that I think I'd like that film better if he'd wound up on Jack Moss' dinner plate, chopped and boiled over noodles.

At least Kindler was a villain, it's fun to be appalled by him until he gets his comeuppance.

Mike O'Hara is pretty likable, boob that he is. His moth to the flame arc isn't quite believable, but no matter there.

Macbeth seems to have a migraine headache for most of that film, and so do I as viewer.

Othello is the first one I really sympathize with; that final speech is devastating.

Arkadin's entire character is a mask, not much human there to relate to. Guy is pretty funny, I think, awful as he is.

Quinlan is again such a monster that I don't care for him, but not so wicked that I want to see him undone - that seems like a bad balance for the audience.

Joseph K is similarly stuck between two worlds, and I don't really care about his plight. Not having black-and-white characters is fine, I just need to care about them.

I love Falstaff, and his undoing is very painful and somehow wonderful to watch.

Mr Clay has as much humanity as his name suggests, so enough said there.

Jake Hannaford? Who knows. Still intrigued by what I've seen.

In his other films, we got Welles as Welles, which I think I loved most of all. He personally was so much more fascinating than the characters he played.

I was just wondering about what makes a film fun or otherwise enjoyable, and getting into the characters just struck me as really necessary, and I think a lot of Welles' films missed it.

Why do I still love Arkadin then? Dunno. It's just a riot all the way through. I guess that's due to the X factor, and god only knows the whyfores of that.

[Roger Ryan]

At the same time Welles films often have very likable, sympathetic characters, but they're just not the lead ones:

Leland and Bernstein are quite appealing in "Kane".

Uncle Jack, Lucy and (to a lesser degree because his screen time was truncated) Major Amberson always seem to charm the audience in "Ambersons". Despite his subsequent bitterness and "romantic-to-a-fault" character, Eugene is still appealing as well.

Welles as Haki is amusing in "Journey" as is the comedy of Mr. and Mrs. Mathews.

Wilson in "The Stranger" is the moral center of that film and appealing, along with Billy House's superb turn as the general store manager.

Perhaps the longer version of "Lady From Shanghai" did something more with Gus Schilling's comic relief, but pretty much the rest of these characters are properly despicable.

"Macbeth" and "Othello" tend to affect the intellect more than the emotions of the viewer. I agree that Welles as Othello is sympathetic.

I now find Sophie's character to be quite emotionally affecting in "Arkadin" and, of course, Tamiroff's performance as Zouk practically saves the last portion of the film.

"Touch Of Evil" is again more intellectually interesting than emotionally engaging. I don't think anyone particularly finds the Mike character appealing although Suzie's pluck makes her a lot of fun. Tana is an appealing character for audiences, especially when she's jousting with Quinlan.

"The Trial" has no appealing characters (not even Tamiroff this time), but then it's Kafka so that's not surprising.

"Chimes" has the glorious appealing Welles performance as Falstaff, but many of the supporting performances (Rutherford especially) are also warmly appreciated.

No one in "The Immortal Story" is appealing, but Moreau as "the girl" registers some sympathy.

I suspect that none of the characters in "The Other Side Of The Wind" will warm our hearts, being that they are all venomous satires on various film business professionals and hangers-on (although I've always found Norman Foster's performance as Billy to hold some appeal).

[Glenn Anders]

I've always been attracted to the unapologetic audacity of Welles' films.

I agree that usually his sympathetic characters tend to be on the side, peripheral. They are compassionate, thoughtful, and often amusing. Like a Bernstein, they help us understand the humanity of ogres like Kane, Georgie Minafer, Franz Kindler, or Hank Quinlan.

Glenn

[NoFake]

There is obviously a gulf here, but a propos ARKADIN, it may be worth mentioning that it was the Welles film much, if not most, beloved by many of the Cahiers crew, including Bazin, Truffaut, and Rohmer. In his introduction to Bazin's "Orson Welles," for example, Truffaut calls it one of his favorite films, "probably because Welles uses his whole keyboard in it. When he made this film, with paltry means, Orson Welles had been making movies for fifteen years, and produced with it a sort of recapitulation of his oeuvre." For his part, Bazin, saying that he "couldn't say it better myself" and so "cedes the pen" to Rohmer, quotes the latter as follows: "This story is not fantastic but more precisely, marvelous, of a marvelousness all the more rare in that it surpasses the bounds of modern enchantment, exoticism and science fiction..." (my translation)

There is lots more, but this gives an idea.

[ClassicBri]

It's sad to see that there's such a distaste for "The Stranger" even by Welles, himself. I'm an avid Welles fan and I've always found it to be one of my favorites, right on par with Kane and Lady from Shanghai. The story is tight - rarely do I see a feature-length movie that doesn't need subplots to fluff the movie's running time, Stranger started and had a wonderful escalating pace all the way to finish. Concentrating an otherwise big story to a handful of characters and keeping it all isolated to a small town just made the action that much more enjoyable. All in all, it's just the kind of movie that I would eventually like to make myself. I watch it whenever I need to get inspiration to write.

On "Arkadin" - I'm too much a fan of its plot to not love the sum of its parts. Having someone investigate a life just to find out what could be uncovered is just surreal. But I definitely see where the falling out of Arkadin can happen. It's definitely not for everyone - even among Welles fans.

[Glenn Anders]

Welcome, ClassicBri.

Agreed.

You have come to the right place.

Glenn

[Tony]

Here's a question:

Which Welles films can you show to friends/family who aren't Wellsians?

For example, you can show Kane to anybody, with fair to great response, but Arkadin will not play: in the conventional sense, it's just too awful, it's "special qualities" unable to be perceived by most. The Stranger can be shown to anybody, with modest to good success. The Trial....????

[Glenn Anders]

I should say, Tony, with the proviso that you inform your companion(s) that they are going to watch a personal documentary, F FOR FAKE is a film that most people will find entertaining. I suppose that is what you are talking about.

TOUCH OF EVIL, in its restored version, is also a good watch on a Friday night.

Welles did not generally make films which reached down to "the masses." Callow quotes him as saying, in effect, that he makes films he wants his audiences to reach up for.

Glenn

[Cole]

"Which Welles films can you show to friends/family who aren't Wellsians?"

You're not pulling our legs, are you??

The answer is obvious: None. N-O-N-E.

Oh, maybe there's one, but no one will understand its qualities: The Stranger.

[Cole]

....and, BTW, I think Arkadin is a superb film, nothwithstanding some of the above slanderous statements...

(to be technical, I should say "libelous" statements)

[Kevin Loy]

I've only played two of his films for people who weren't already interested in his work: Kane and Evil. Most people who weren't interested in Welles' work and watched Kane with me all elicited the same response: okay, but not great...whereas people generally seem to like Touch of Evil a lot (though I tend to think that, while it is an enjoyable film, it isn't one of Welles' most substantial works)

[Terry]

I showed the reconstructed Arkadin to my Mom and gave her the novel to read. She thought the novel was better.

I've been grappling with the question of what to show a newbie for some time, and I still haven't thought of what to show anyone. What does it mean when even his most ardent fans aren't able to exhibit his work? I think Kane is the safest bet, but my friends and family enjoy lighter fare and probably wouldn't get into the opera sequences, so I didn't screen it.

[Glenn Anders]

Hadji: I believe we are living in a time when people are dancing on the edge of the volcano, and thinking the heat is coming from the Sun. Global Warming doesn't exist, they say. There is "a vast Liberal [used to be Communist] Conspiracy" designed to spoil their arrogant, racist activities. The world is being overrun by "those people." Let's make fun of each other's religions to see what happens. Let's use a broad brush on a billion.2 human beings, calling them Islamofascists, because if everyone they're the fascists, the World will not think we can be, no matter how definitions and logic suggest the opposite.

Orson Welles was profoundly American, a deeply thoughtful, passionate, and idealistic patriot and humanist [a term which has as bad a connotation as "liberal" in many circles now]. His major influences believed that he could be an instrument to inform, entertain, and stimulate people.

Here, according to Callow, is what he told a group of Adult Educators in 1943:

"All educators, whether they like it or not, are in the amusement business, and all movie makers and radio broadcasters are educators . . . In this shrinking world of ours, adult education must first enlist in the war against provincialism . . . ."

I'm afraid that war, for all our pretensions and lip service, was lost in America during the Post-War. It is naggingly offensive to the average American to be urged to learn something other than working a gadget or a machine. "Don't confuse me with facts!" The educational element in Welles is what puts people off. Why should I learn about the history of "The Robber Barons" while watching CITIZEN KANE; the influence of the car and industrialization on genteel American society in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS; Pan-Americanism in IT'S ALL TRUE; Geopolitik in JOURNEY INTO FEAR; the coming of fascism to America in THE STRANGER; the corruption of women in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI; sexual politics in MACBETH; jealousy in OTHELLO; the life of a "Merchant of Death" [now taken over by the Carlyle Group] in MR. ARKADIN; the debasement of modern man in THE TRIAL; law enforcement and racism in TOUCH OF EVIL; the nature of Art in F FOR FAKE, etc.

Just give us the explosions, good CGI, some pornographic sex, grossly vulgar humor; flatter our ignorance and dazzle us with something like technicolor (on the cheap). You can keep your Education in Black and White.

That is why I believe a Welles film may be a hard sell today. His own special effects have been absorbed, and Americans find it hurts to think. Why else would we be in the astonishingly stupid and dangerous pre-totalitarian situation we are now in?

Glenn

[Terry]

Glenn, have you been watching Fox News and CNN Headline Prime again? I can't swallow the culture of hatred, so I stopped watching.

Even when Welles was alive, he was fit only as fodder for fat jokes on Mork and Mindy. I'm no educator. I'll happily watch my Arkadin box set while America burns its witches and jacks off on the Xbox 360.

[Tony]

Welles's films were never watchable for most people, from 1941 to today. They are too slow, too weird, and too arty for the average person. Was it Truffault, or Godard, who said Welles was an aristocratic director? Welles was never a director for the masses, though he always wanted to be; unfortunately, he hadn't the faintest idea of how to make a popular film.

Can you imagine that he believed Arkadin was going to be a huge box office success? He also thought the same of F For Fake!

Though he was a genius, he just hadn't a practical or commercial bone in his body.

And he will always be my favourite director. :;):