Mr. Arkadin on DVD soon

[ToddBaesen]

Criterion is having a 40% off sale on selected titles until November 24.

Both of their Orson Welles titles are included, so if you haven't gotten them, now may be a good time to get them cheap...

And of course, there's also plenty of other great films at 40% off...


MR. ARKADIN/CONFIDENTIAL REPORT three disc set with novel - $30.00

F FOR FAKE with ONE MAN BAND two disc set - $24.00


http://www.criterion.com/asp/browse_dir ... asp?id=178

[Glenn Anders]

Alas, Todd: Both the Welles' selections seem to be out of the Sale loop. At least, I couldn't toss THE COMPLETE ARKADIN into the "cart," for some reason, and the F FOR FAKE dual disc offering, which I would have liked not just for the film itself but also for ONE MAN BAND, was listed as "out of stock."

Perhaps, I just didn't do it right.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

At least it's encouraging to know Orson Welles films are selling well...

I tried ordering several titles that were also out of stock, but still managed to spend over $100!

[Roger Ryan]

A fantastic analysis! It's amazing to me how such a minor work from Welles can be revealed to contain so much resonance. Thanks for sharing these observations.

[Glenn Anders]

A fantastic analysis, Roger, I agree. But I would not term MR. ARKADIN, "such a minor work." Certainly, Stefan Droessler's compilation version is in many ways a major film, as Welles, I'm sure, intended it to be. The fact that, as Droessler told me, a key sequence could not be found robs the picture of a centrality for the character of Jacob Zouk, which would have made MR. ARKADIN much the picture I saw in London during the Summer of 1955. Zouk is the warm heart of MR. ARKADIN, representing old Eastern Europe being gnawed upon by America and Russia in the Cold War of the 1950's. [And so, the themes of Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN and THE MAN BETWEEN are invoked.] Everyone else in the picture is deranged or on the make. Only Zouk, at the end of his string, is ready to go into the dark if he can have a gooseliver with baked apples, as he had as a child.

Aside from perhaps a peculiar conceit that Gregory Arkadin is personally acting out some academic theory of Jacques Derrida, I give your analysis high marks, keats. I particularly like your rooting of the film's matrix in Greek Mythology, and your exploration of the Wellsian/Shakespearean theme of "What's in a name?'

MR. ARKADIN, I should think , with its pictorial and textual references to "the plane [in the sense of an artificial bird], the castle [as a lair], the various depictions of labyrinths (one no longer with us), van Stratten and Milly [as putative Theseus and son(!) figures], Raina [the doomed maiden], and Arkadin as "the Ogre," derive from the The Myth of the Minotaur. In another place, I have also linked the film, in a narrative sense, to Eric Ambler's The Mask of Dimitrios, which was made into a film by Jean Negulesco, a year after the release of Welles' JOURNEY INTO FEAR.

I think you are very clever in recognizing the importance of "naming" in MR. ARKADIN. You might note that Arkadin's name is spelled and pronounced a number of different ways by various characters in the picture. As you point out, Arkadin was not really his name at all but Athabadze. Just as Benat in JOURNEY INTO FEAR and Dimitrios in THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS had other names. Like Dimitrios, Arkadin had been a pimp and an assassin in his early life. [And like the beginning of THE THIRD MAN (and of course, MR. ARKADIN), Dimitrios Makropolas is dead (washed up on the shore of the Bosphorus, leading a mystery writer, Leden, to examine the criminal's life through a series of investigative interviews). And I'm certain one of Welles' customary inside jokes was that Arkadin was probably suggested by Harry Lime from THE THIRD MAN, who became a gentler figure in The Lives of Harry Lime radio series -- who becomes Van Stratten in MR. ARKADIN. You might also explore the implication that Van Stratten has had several aliases, too.

There's a lot more, of course, but you have made a very good beginning. Congratulations!

Glenn

[NoFake]

Absolutely! A minor point, to complement keats' observation that

The fable of the scorpion and the frog is intended to prove that one’s fundamental nature trumps logic and intention.

It also recalls Michael’s famous line in LADY FROM SHANGHAI:

Human nature is eternal...
...therefore, one who follows his nature...
...keeps his original nature in the end.

Another recurring Wellesian theme...

[Cole]

It's amazing to me how such a minor work from Welles can be revealed to contain so much resonance.

Minor work?

I don't think so. The Hollywood pics from the late 40's were "minor" but everything else from Welles was "major." Major in the sense that in the formation of the movie he wasn't inhibited by studio/commercial limitations. Everything you see in Mr. Arkadin was from the creative impulses from a very talented artist. It's a beautiful movie, but it is tarnished by the poverty of financial backing, and the lack of control that Welles had in the finished product.

[Glenn Anders]

Go! Cole, go!

And a vigorous, productive 2009 here to you!

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

Well, I am liking the movie more and more through the years and "keats" essay has only improved my appreciation of it. I've championed the "Comprehensive" version considerably on this site. That said, as far as great filmmaking goes, I think KANE, AMBERSONS, SHANGHAI, MACBETH, OTHELLO, EVIL, TRIAL, CHIMES and FAKE are better films (with KANE, AMBERSONS, OTHELLO, EVIL, TRIAL, CHIMES and FAKE being the "major" ones in my opinion). ARKADIN is certainly more important than all of the television projects and I think it's a better film than JOURNEY, STRANGER and IMMORTAL STORY (and if we're counting Welles productions not directed by him, I think it's better than JANE EYRE).

I know Glenn mourns the lost version he saw in London in '55, but I think the "Comprehensive" version is essentially the film Welles thought he was making before being removed from the project. I don't see how additional footage or changes in editing could make the film better or stronger than what it is (I do love the idea of showing Zouk being released from jail at the film's beginning, but I'm not certain its loss significantly alters the intent of the film). If I call it "minor" Welles, it's only in comparison to the truly outstanding work Welles did. For me, the two romantic leads are lacking considerably (the third Mrs. Welles was not much of an actress and the performance is not helped by having Billie Whitelaw dub all of her dialogue); in fact, I feel these are the two least impressive performances found in any of Welles' movies. While I admire the surreality of Welles' story, it's ultimately unconvincing as straight drama, something that Welles' "major" work has no problem with. ARKADIN's many setpieces are wonderfully executed and it has some of the most colorful, finely portrayed supporting characters of any of his films (with Tamiroff providing some of the best comedy one will find in Welles' work), but as a whole, I don't think it's a staggering achievement.

Considering MR. ARKADIN was once considered a complete abomination (and looked like one in the public domain tapes that existed), I think the fates have been very kind to it and I enjoy returning to it from time to time without embarassment.

[Roger Ryan]

Yes, as to its importance in understanding Welles the creator, ARKADIN is a "major" work since it remains one of the few filmic examples we have of something Welles came up without any assistance from outside collaborators (be they Mankiewicz or Shakespeare). My use of the term "minor" was strictly in relation to my opinion of the film's quality in general.

[Harvey Chartrand]

All this talk of Mr. Arkadin reminds me that I recently saw Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981) on Space: The Imagination Station. Twenty-seven years after Mr. Arkadin wrapped, there was an older, sadder-looking Robert Arden given five minutes all to himself on the big screen, portraying an American Ambassador driven to suicide by evil Damien Thorn (an impossibly young Sam Neill). This was probably the most sustained bit of acting Arden had done in all those years. He was quite good, appropriately dignified at first and then increasingly frantic as demonic forces overwhelmed him. That's quite a character arc to pull off in such a brief scene. It's kind of sad to ponder Arden's fate, as he had hoped that Mr. Arkadin would make him a star. Alas, his performance as grifter/adventurer Guy Van Stratten was universally panned by the few critics who saw the film when it came out, and so it was to be bit parts and BBC radio work from then on for poor old Robert Arden, who died in 2004.

[ZenKaneCity]

On the other hand, here's something to curl your toes — a clip of Patricia Medina guest-starring on the Man from U.N.C.L.E.:
http://www.dailymotion.com/search/David ... c?from=rss

[Glenn Anders]

Gentlemen: With apologies to keats, there is a fourth Wellsian theme, which encompasses the other three: The dramatic realization of loss due to experience, time or old age, seen as a profoundly motivating human factor. We can find this theme in CITIZEN KANE, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, THE STRANGER, THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, MACBETH, OTHELLO, MR. ARKADIN, TOUCH OF EVIL, THE TRIAL, FALSTAFF, THE IMMORTAL STORY, and F FOR FAKE. I think the latter remarks about Robert Arden or Patricia Medina fit very much into these Wellsian themes brought up:

It was not Robert Arden's fault that MR. ARKADIN's marvelous edit, which I saw in 1955, was botched so that the picture was not released in America for seven years, or that by 1962, there were half a dozen fugitive versions, all of them inferior to the one I saw; and all of which, to a greater or lesser extent, made him seem like a chattering, unmotivated fool. On what I know the film I saw to have been, I think that Robert Arden might have achieved a rather successful career as a leading man/tough guy in American movies of the late 1950's and 1960's. [Paola Mori was another matter. Her larking role as the daughter of a social climber led her, as the Countess Paola Di Gerfalco, out of a cloud of criticism about her Italian aristocratic fascist family, but into what was apparently a not terribly happy life as the third Mrs. Orson Welles in the deserts of the American Southwest. One hopes that she had lots of jigsaw puzzles.] As for Patricia Medina, through tireless hard work, she had a long career as star of some entertaining British films from 1937 on, married British film matinee idol Richard Greene for a decade, managed a Hollywood career as a voluptuous bombshell, took on quite a bit of stage work, some of it on Broadway, some of it with her second husband Joseph Cotten, with whom she seems to have had a devoted marriage and partnership. She, of course, loads of Television, for which she was well paid, and continued in demand as late as 1994, the year of Cotten's death. So far as I can tell, she is still alive and as reasonably well as can be expected, at age 88. She published her autobiography in 1998: Laid Back in Hollywood: Remembering. I don't know it, but I expect that we might gain some insights into the relationship between Cotten and Welles from reading it. In any case, most show biz figures we paw over her can only have dreamed of such a long work and love-filled career as she had, even if loss inevitably intruded, and even if living at 88 can't be too much fun. She and Norman Lloyd may be the last of Welles' film contemporaries still alive! [Of course, Lloyd is 94, and will soon appear in BROADWAY: BEYOND THE GOLDEN AGE.

Roger: Though, of course, I can't really convey that 1955 experience to anyone, keats is right, and possibly even if Stefan Droessler had found the sequence of Zouk's release from prison, there might have been no way of recapturing the magic of Welles' genius. I have no quarrel with the work on the Complete MR. ARKADIN of Stefan, whom I hope to meet again next week, except for the ending, which I've discussed with him. He has intimated me as being a small influence in starting MR. ARKADIN with the body of Mily lying on the beach (looking a bit like the body of Dimitrios in THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS . . . well, not exactly), but I am equally sure the film should end with the Marquis of Rutleigh driving Raina away in her little sports car, leaving Van Stratten behind to remain an embittered adventurer like Michael Ohara, or to become, perhaps, a miserable hustler, as Arkadin had been, at first. Having the film end with the plane crashing instead seems to me a shock effect which Welles would never have gone for. It's just not the way I remember it. All of Welles' films have a denouement that allows the viewer to ponder the meaning of what she/he has seen. The version I saw of MR. ARKADIN did, too, but that takes nothing away from the admiration I have for Stefan's accomplishment -- one that has led on to others equally distinguished.

And that admiration certainly extends to you, Roger, who have created valuable work, and have contributed truly brilliant insights, here and elsewhere, into the works of Orson Welles.

Glenn

[marcoshark]

Guys,
Been a while since I have posted, but I saw this little article and it made me think of a certain movie...

Marc


http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIs ... AM20090115

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. agents filed criminal charges on Wednesday against a pilot who parachuted out of his airplane before it crashed in an apparent attempt to escape his legal woes by faking his death.

Pilot Marcus Schrenker, who is recovering in a north Florida hospital after slashing his wrists, was charged with making a false distress call and willfully crashing his plane.

The charges were filed in U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Florida, and carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, a $5,000 fine, plus restitution for the $36,000 rescue effort.

Schrenker, a 38-year-old money manager from Indiana, was already wanted there on financial fraud charges alleging he misled consumers who invested in his wealth management companies and misappropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money.

He flew alone aboard a small plane that took off for Florida on Sunday from Anderson, Indiana. Investigators said that as the plane flew over Alabama, he made a fake distress call, put the plane on autopilot and parachuted out.

The empty plane crashed in a swampy area near a housing development in the northwest Florida city of Milton. No one was injured and no structures were damaged, investigators said.

Schrenker parachuted safely to the ground near the Alabama city of Harpersville on Sunday night, got a police officer to give him a ride to a hotel and then fled, investigators said.

He had previously stashed a motorcycle in a storage unit near that hotel and got away before local police learned of the plane crash.

U.S. marshals caught up with him on Tuesday night at a north Florida campground, incoherent and bleeding severely from an apparent attempt to kill himself by cutting his wrists

He was in fair condition and under guard at a Tallahassee hospital.

An affidavit attached to the charges said that the red motorcycle Schrenker drove to Florida carried saddlebags stocked with maps, survival paraphernalia, military ready-to-eat meals and what appeared to be a bullet-point script for his distress call.

He had told aviation dispatchers that his windshield had imploded and he was bleeding profusely. When the crashed plane was recovered, the windshield was still intact, the affidavit said.

Schenker will be tried first in Florida on the federal charges, then sent to Indiana for trial on the financial charges, Florida officials said

(Reporting by Jane Sutton, editing by Anthony Boadle)

[Glenn Anders]

Absolutely!

Life has imitated Art -- in this case, from artful creation of a certain character in THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947). The alleged act described in the report also bears resemblance to what the villain does in GILDA (1946), the film which gave Rita Hayworth Welles her most memorable role, and which had a script that was said to have been influenced by Orson Welles.

I am living proof that such schemes sometimes work. And, oh boy-y, as Jedediah Leland liked to say, we're going to have dozens of them in the next year or so.

Good to see you here, marcoshark! Swim around more often.

Glenn Anders