Workprint material for MR ARKADIN is on Dailymotion...

[nickleschichoney]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x453kk7

The rare material starts about 7 minutes in.

[Roger Ryan]

This is a very interesting find. Primarily a compendium of the differences in editing found in the various versions of the film, it illustrates how Welles (and those who reworked the film after Welles was barred from post-production) altered the content by dubbing in new lines of dialogue. However, there are a few moments of footage/audio that has not been available before. I believe the shots of the character Bracco near the end feature the actual on-set recorded voice of actor Grégoire Aslan, who was dubbed by Welles himself initially and then by another (possibly Aslan?) for the various released versions. During this section you can also hear Welles reading Bracco's lines as a guide for Robert Arden (Aslan wasn't actually on the set during any of the shots with Arden). There is also a brief exchange between Van Stratten and Zouk (again, live on-set audio) where Van Stratten mentions working for Tadeus that is not found in any of the three versions on the Criterion set.

[nickleschichoney]

That is Gregoire Aslan's voice. I don't think you hear his voice in CONFIDENTIAL REPORT. The same actor who dubs him there also dubs the bartender that Guy talks to in Juan-les-Pins ("The Marquis of Rutleigh, but her father thinks nobody's good enough for her, so..."). I have a feeling that Dolivet asked Welles to redub the footage for what's now known as the Corinth version. I doubt Welles wanted to do that kind of awful dubbing on his own terms. He would have wanted to reshoot the scene.

In Callow's interview with Robert Arden, Arden claimed that Welles said for the Jakob Zouk scenes "Say anything, we'll dub it over later." This is obviously false, as the work print version of those scenes, preserving the on-set dialogue, show Arden and Tamiroff saying lines that have an impact on the story and sound scripted. Arden is likely confusing the events that happened during and after filming.

What's interesting is that the dubbed dialogue found in the Corinth version and in CONFIDENTIAL REPORT seems to make Van Stratten a very sympathetic character. In both, Guy tells Zouk that Zouk needs to understand his story in order for Guy to save his life. In CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, Guy sounds calmer and cooler than he does in the Corinth version, almost like a tough anti-hero (that Arden's acting range clearly cannot reach). This is despite the fact that Welles always maintained that Guy was an unsympathetic idiot. "The worst man in the story," he said to Peter Bogdanovich, "He has no substance, no human substance, he's a shallow hustler" (p. 241, THIS IS ORSON WELLES).

In contrast to both of these versions (and the "Bob Harden" Spanish version), the work print version has Guy barge into Zouk's room, and when Zouk asks the simple question "Who are you?" ("Santa Claus?"), Guy stands up, attempts to collect himself, and babbles in response:

GUY: Did you ever hear of a man called Arkadin? Gregory Arkadin?
ZOUK: [Yeah?] So how do you come into it?
GUY: My name is Van Stratten. ’Til a little while ago I was running American cigarettes into Italy… A lot of us were doin’ it after the war. I was working for a guy called Tadeus Waslowski in Tangiers. You’ve heard of him.
ZOUK: So what’s he got to do with… Mr. Arkadin?
GUY: Nothing…
ZOUK: So neither do I…
GUY: Will you shut up and listen!? There’s hardly any time left. You gotta’ get this straight! If I’m gonna’ save your miserable life for ya, ye’re gonna’ have to understand this story, see? It all began one night last spring, in the harbor at Naples…

Their exchange continues after the flashback to Bracco's death:

ZOUK: What would a man like Arkadin be doing with somebody like you?
GUY: Bracco must have had something on his mind…
ZOUK: … Bracco?…
GUY: THE ONE WHO GOT KNIFED! I already told you!

This second scene is unlike the Corinth, where the dubbed Guy calmly says, "Mily was my girlfriend at the time. I already told you, and Bracco I'd never even seen before."

The work print has completely different character dynamics for Guy and Zouk. Guy comes across as a rambling, babbling idiot, whose recollection of the events is more for his benefit than for Zouk's -- Guy is trying to collect himself and failing. Meanwhile, poor old Zouk is just a patient listener trying to keep track of everything that comes out of Guy's mouth. This fits more with Welles's view that Guy was "the worst man in the story". Indeed, Guy comes across as incredibly unsympathetic in these work print fragments. If the film had used them, our view of Guy during the flashbacks would have been quite a bit different. He's not a hero or even an anti-hero. He's a schmuck.

[Jedediah Leland]

Remarkable. On digging a little further, I find that there are 9 parts to this, totalling some four and a half hours of Arkadin workprint footage. Seeing the various takes, with and without sound, conveys a lot about this wonderfully weird and wacky film.

[Terry]

That was shown on RAI (Italian public television) several years ago (their water mark is now covered by whatever "Video Lazio" is.) I'd meant to do a fan edit to extract just the workprint footage, never got around to it, and forgot this weird 5-hour cut of Arkadin ever existed. Thanks for posting.

[nickleschichoney]

I've collected all the work print footage (including the stuff from the 2006 Criterion set) into one video, and it runs about two hours. I also have my own edit of MR. ARKADIN that I've shown Roger Ryan -- more often than not, it uses the structure laid out by the work print and the first "Mark Sharpe" Spanish version that aligns closely with it.

[DexyMan]

Wow that sounds really interesting. Could you elaborate more on how it differs from the comprehensive version and which you prefer?

[nickleschichoney]

Well, I guess I prefer my version. I included more work print footage than the Comprehensive Version did. I tried editing it based not so much on what scenes Welles said he wanted to include (after all, he never finished editing), but instead on Welles's broader views on the project: I tried highlighting the scumminess of Guy and Arkadin, the fabulously fractured world they're in, the sympathetic nature of Zouk, Sophie, and Raina, etc.

The resources I had were not of the highest quality. I would have liked to have the whole work print and the whole first Spanish version, rather than the excerpts from both that were included on the Criterion DVD, but I made use of what was available, even if it meant splicing whole shots together from low- and high-quality sources.

Admittedly, it's more subjective and speculative an edit than the inclusive Comprehensive Version, but I did try going for the spirit of what Welles wanted. I tried creating a more flowing, tighter film with the available resources. Ultimately, the structure for my edit of the film is more-or-less directly taken from the first Spanish version and the work print fragments.

[Jedediah Leland]

That sounds fascinating!

The lack of any "definitive" version of Arkadin, the surfeit of versions already available, and the amount of material out there, all make me wonder how many more Arkadin variants may be possible. It's a superb concept for a film, lousily executed, with moments of brilliance and beauty, so there's a real incentive to keep chipping away at finding another refinement of this strange, ambiguous film...

[nickleschichoney]

I think the movie is misunderstood. As I wrote to Dexyman, the movie plays best when you realize that the narrator (Guy) is an insecure, incompetent, unsympathetic idiot. He's not a tough guy or a world-weary anti-hero, but he acts like he is. After all, who else but an idiot would buy Arkadin's story? On the other hand, Arkadin is ultimately the same kind of idiot, except with power. Who else but a powerful idiot would chase Guy all around Munich, thus throwing away an opportunity to rub him out, but forget to do something as simple as to see if Guy had a plane to catch?

You might want to see something more in them than there really is -- this is kind of what Raina does with Guy, I think -- but in the end, you've wasted your time.

These dynamics are destroyed in later versions, all of which attempt to make Guy a little more sympathetic and collected in the Zouk scenes. They do this not through newly-shot sequences, but instead through poor dubbing of old ones. This is why the lip movements rarely match up in the attic sequences as they're shown in the Comprehensive Version, the Corinth Version, and Confidential Report.

[nickleschichoney]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXMOlZ5 ... pp=desktop

[Le Chiffre]

Thanks for putting that together, nickles. My favorite part is where Welles himself voices the black pianist, which is followed by an iris out back to Zouk's place. I don't recall seeing that iris out from there before, although I haven't seen any version of the film in a few years and am probably wrong. I'd like to see your version sometime.

The lack of any "definitive" version of Arkadin, the surfeit of versions already available, and the amount of material out there, all make me wonder how many more Arkadin variants may be possible. It's a superb concept for a film, lousily executed, with moments of brilliance and beauty, so there's a real incentive to keep chipping away at finding another refinement of this strange, ambiguous film...

Some leading Welles scholars like Jonathon Rosenbaum seem to think that CONFIDENTIAL REPORT is the closest thing to definitive that we're likely to get, but that's the version I like the least on the Criterion COMPLETE ARKADIN set. I recommended that set to a friend who had never seen the film. He started with CR and only made it about twenty minutes into the film before he gave up, saying it was a mess. But then he tried the Comprehensive version put together by the Munich Museum and made it through that easily, saying it made the story much more clear and enjoyable. I agree with him for the most part, and I wonder too if someone else could do an even better edit sometime. Maybe they'll even find that "Zouk gets out of jail" scene that Glenn Anders claims to have seen so many years ago.

[nickleschichoney]

The way Welles voices the pianist, it almost sounds like Cleveland Brown from FAMILY GUY. I found that hilarious.

Rosenbaum and Francois Thomas's preference of CONFIDENTIAL REPORT seems strange. Thomas claims that he prefers it to the Corinth because it has a better soundtrack, but only in some cases is it better, and whenever CR's soundtrack IS better than the Corinth version, Droessler and Bertemes tried to include those sections in their Comprehensive Version. Wasn't CONFIDENTIAL REPORT admired by filmmakers involved in the French New Wave?

As for the iris-outs, those exist only in the work print and the first ("Mark Sharpe") Spanish version. I used them in my cut, since they go nicely with that tracking shot of Arden in the first scene (where he's nearly-engulfed by blackness) and end the flashbacks on a kind of weird, almost-farcical note. By the way, there are several correspondences between the work print and the first Spanish version, including the billing of Robert Arden as Mark/Marc Sharpe. I wonder if Arden was so ashamed of the way his part turned out in the earliest version(s) that he wanted to use a fake name.

[Le Chiffre]

Too bad nobody ever asked Arden, as far as I know, exactly why/how he became Marc Sharpe. It'd be interesting to find out.

[Wellesnet]

Someone has put another collection of Arkadin workprint footage on YouTube. This one runs about 23 minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lixhbps ... xB9htLCQq8