MR ARKADIN (aka CONFIDENTIAL REPORT) - New DVD (PAL) old VHS (NTSC)

[Jeff Wilson]

The time on my Homevision tape (and the Criterion LD) is 97:32 or thereabouts, so I don't know where they got the 99-minute thing. I'll check the Corinth version today and see what comes up with it.

Somebody here mentioned the Arkadin restoration quite a while ago; I don't recall who it was, or what the details were. There weren't many, let's put it that way.

[Fredric]

Wow, earlier this week I watched my Arkadin DVD (Public Domain), and today I watched Confidential Report. What I said before above about merely a restoration would improve this movie goes one-thousand-fold for CR! The two versions aren't even in the same league! The PD version is so chopped, so hideously edited, especially the first act. CR was so engrossing, the scenes longer, the pacing slower. I really found it wonderful.

Re: the two added scenes in CR: The first one with the Pianist and the blonde was really nice, kind of reminiscent of The Magnificent Ambersons (part with all the townspeople talking exposition). The second story (The Georgian Toast), which appears first, is nice, but it was kind of thrown in and doesn't seem to fit where they placed it. The scorpion and frog story is much better, IMO, and it has a nice context in the overall scene. The Georgian Toast would be nice as a deleted scene extra on the DVD.

I can't wait to see the Corinth version. Boycott the Public Domain version!

[jaime marzol]

i'm totally confused here, the corinth version, the 99 minute version......

can some one attach identifying handles to this list below:

a version: bats, flashbacks, 2 stories at party.

b version: no bats, flashbacks, one story at party.

c version: no bats, no flashbacks.

and where the hell are the blonde and the piano at?

fredric: which is the one you said is really choppy, a, b, or c.
a georgian toast? mine has a toast about a graveyard that had very young kids, and they toasted to friendship.

confused in florida

[Fredric]

I'm sorry Jaime,

Rosenbaum calls it the Georgian Toast, and Arkadin says Georgian at the beginning of the tale, but it is the story you're talking about: a Dream about visiting a village where the dates on the tombstones reveal the deceased all to have died young. When he confronts an old man as to why he has lived so long compared to everyone else, the old man says that the dates on the tombstones aren't life dates but how long the dead in question kept his or her longest friend. Let's drink to Friendship.

This is in your version "a". The only version called Confidential Report. This version also has a scene right after the Bracco scene: a collage of Van Stratten doing his first detective work, and he ends up in a bar talking to a black piano player with a blonde chick behind him. I think the bartender has a few lines, too. This is only in version "a", according to Rosenbaum. Also has the bats.

Version B is the Corinth version which has multiple flashbacks, returning to Van Stratten and Zouk periodically. It's apparently the longest version as CR is becoming shorter and shorter as Wellesphiles use their stopwatches.

Version C is the cut up Public Doman version, which is horrendous. No flashbacks. Van Stratten summarizing over scenes that used to be rich in dialogue. Another shocker: The Mily and Arkadin boat scene comes BEFORE the Mily getting the antique dealer info for Van Stratten. What's up with that? She's killed after the boat scene! How can she come back to life to do stuff for Guy? Also the boat scene now comes before Guy starts his investigation! And she knows so much already. Blech! A movie totally ruined.

Liking Mr. Arkadin more and more each time I view it.

[Le Chiffre]

Confidential Report and the Mr. Arkadin with flashbacks (Corinth version) are both pretty good. I think Jaime is right: the differences between the two are not terribly significant, although it's fun to have two different routes through the same story.

As for the the so-called 'public domain' version (without flashbacks), I think Welles pretty much disowned that one.

He also tried to disown the novel, which was probably ghost written from one of his later Arkadin screenplays. However, the book actually contains alot of interesting information about the characters and clarifies the story somewhat. Of course, in the book you are without Welles' visual razzle-dazzle, so you have time to notice the story's sometimes shaky logic (particularly Arkadin's amnesia claim). In the book, Van Stratten comes off as an even bigger sucker then Michael O'Hara.

[Fredric]

Here's a "shaky logic" question of my own: Why doesn't Arkadin just phone ahead to his daughter and warn her instead of try to race Van Stratten back to Spain at the end?

Another observation: is the big German Polezi on the left Goldfinger?

[Jeff Wilson]

Yes, that's Gert Frobe as one of the cops.

[jaime marzol]

fredric, thanks for info. the piano player, in my mind he was a bartender!

would be cool to have cd-rom that would have all 3 versions playing on screen at the same time, and the viewer at any poin can enlarge any of the screen with function button.

a long time ago when i had 6 tapes of the same 3 movies i put 2 tvs side by side and played the films beside eachother to make sure there wasn't a 4th version, and there wasn't. but this would be a good way to do a comparison, only screening the different versions against each other.

i also like the arkadins more every time i watch them. i even like the really horrible version because of the different takes it uses.

it's funny how welles' films appreciate with each viewing. too bad the producers couldn't figure out how to make the patrons sit through arkadin 3 times.

a quote from PICTURE to end my post:
selznik publicity man on loan to mgm, helping
huston on RED BADGE OF COURAGE.

"I SAY, GIVE THE PUBLIC WHAT THEY WANT. THE PUBLIC WANTS MA AND PA KETTLE MOVIES."

[nathan_h]

Which are the alternate takes used in the "Tony Curtis version"...?

--

Looks like the new PAL DVD is the going to tide me over till I can find a copy of the Corinth version. (Yeah, no more possibility of paying TOO MUCH on ebay for the Criterion LD of confidential report.)

[jaime marzol]

i don't know which is the tony curtis version, but version 'C,' the not bats, one story, no flashback version is the one i noticed the alternate takes in. most notably in the scene where they are playing cards, sophie and the frog faced general.

and in other places i'm sure, but not completely positive till i put them side by side.

[jaime marzol]

:::::::::::

arkadin is such a total cartoon. after all this arkadin talk i had to see the piano player that i thought was a bartander. in the opening scene with van stratten and zouk, welles gets such a great look out of arden. he's almost like a vargas; a comic book hero type, granite jaw, cartoonish proportions created by wide angle distortion.

even more cartoonish is van stratten embarking on this whole escapade because of a name a dying man said. that is all he has.

for me, the two most killer scenes in the film are, a) when vanstratten and arkadin go in raina's bedroom, they enter in the extreme b.g. and approach the f.g. arkadin in that funky tunic with elizabethian collar, this scene looks so wild. no movie looks like that. b) later in the film when arkadin, raina, and van stratten meet in van stratten's hotel room, welles created the most radical reverse shots ever made in a small room.

i also like that castle always looming behind everywhere van stratten, and raina go, like arkadin himself watching.

in case some didn't know, raina means queen.

great film. mabe in the next few days i'm pot two tvs side by side and see what the differences are.

[Fredric]

Nathan, I'm not sure about the alternate takes, but I do know that the Public Domain version, aka The Tony Curtis Version, aka Jaime's version C is a radically butchered edit. You don't really notice until you watch Confidential Report (B) and then immediately watch the PD version.

Things off the top of my head:
Van Stratten starts his off-screen Narration on the docks (Bracco scene) in the middle of a sentence! In CR, Guy asks Mily to check things out, she goes to the edge of some crates and sees the shootout between the pegleg man and the cops, then she comes back. In PD, no one observes the shootout except us, then Mily arrives on the scene for the first time. At the end of the Bracco scene, when Mily says, "Arkadin . . . Gregory Arkadin," Van Stratten is already narrating the next section of the film over top. The cuts are quicker, jumpier, hard to follow. I remember that in CR when he describes Arkadin's yacht, you see the front of a big yacht, and in the PD version, when Guy says the same line, someone is pointing to the side of a yacht. Weird.

The next conversation with Mily takes place before he meets Raina. In CR it takes place after he comes back from seeing Raina off, because it was all one continuous scene. When Guy bums a ride with Raina, we hear their dialogue in CR. In PD Guy summarizes the scene with narration and the dialogue doesn't start until she points out the spies. What were they thinking? (Hereafter known as WWTT?)

As a result of all these cuts at the beginning of the film, Arkadin enters the picture much sooner than Welles intended, as he seemed to be attempting a "Third Man/Mister Wu" strategem with the title character.

Then there's Mily's "drunk, blabbing everything to Arkadin" scene on the Yacht before Van Statten has even started investigating Arkadin. And then we see her again when she is supposed to be dead by then! WWTT?!?!?!?!

Since the flashbacks have been removed, the scene with Guy and Zouk begins with the pre-flashback sequence and cuts into the post flashback stuff, which cuts out a lot of material and really makes no sense. Where's Zouk's incentive to help Guy without hearing the story? We're barely through introductions when Guy is suddenly dragging him out of the attic.

That's all I can think of now. I'm suddenly becoming the resident expert on this film.

[Fredric]

Another intersting item: I tracked down Cahiers du Cinema's top 12 films of all time, a list from 1958 in which they first picked the top 24 directors, which were:

1. Murnau
2. Renoir
3. Rossellini
4. Eisenstein
5. Griffith
6. Welles
7. Dreyer
8. Vigo
10. Stroheim
11. Hitchcock
12. Chaplin
13. Ophuls
14. Lang
15. (tie) Hawks, Keaton
17. Bergman
18. Nicholas Ray
19. (tie) Norman McLaren, Flaherty
21. (tie) Bunuel, Clair
23. (tie) Visconti, Dovzhenko

Then they took the top twelve and picked a best film from each. Here's the list:

1. Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
2. The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
3. Voyage in Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (Rossellini, 1953)
4. Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein, 1945/1958)
5. Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
6. Confidential Report/ Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1956)
7. Ordet (Dreyer, 1955)
8. Ugetsu monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)
9. L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)
10. The Wedding March (Stroheim, 1927)
11. Under Capricorn (Hitchcock, 1949)
12. Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin, 1947)

Apparently, the critics' preference of Mr. Arkadin over Citizen Kane inspired Bazin's "On the Politique des Auteurs":

For its adherents, _Mr. Arkadin_ is therefore more important than _Citizen Kane_ since they discover in it, justly, still more of Orson Welles. In other terms, they want to retain of the equation, auteur + subject = the work, only the auteur, the subject being reduced to 0... This is not at all to deny the role of the auteur, but to restore to it the preposition without with the noun is only a lame concept. 'Auteur,' without a doubt, but of what?

Fascinating...

[dmolson]

Fredric --
great indepth coverage. I especially like the 'WWTT' annotations, even though I've yet to watch M.A/CR. Despite the curiosity to watch and fall into the Tony Curtis' edition web, I guess I'll hold out for a dvd reg. 1 of the other versions, at a reasonable price. How could so many versions of one film exist? What's probably more amazing is that, where many directors' best films have yet to be released on dvd, Welles' Arkadin, which many feel is a curio among his catalogue, is there to watch -- if you can stomach the alterations.
Your cahiers du cinema list is quite interesting too... Not just because they chose 'Arkadin' but also because of other directors' works. 'Under Capricorn?' To borrow your acronim, WWTT? Even Monsieur Verdoux doesn't come close to Chaplin's silent classics... But it looks like, for some of the auteurs, they stuck with most recent releases. Just amazed that John Ford wasn't somewhere on that list, and just wondering who they bumped on the 10-years-later list to fit in Jerry Lewis...

[ChristopherBanks]

Then they took the top twelve and picked a best film from each. Here's the list:

1. Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
2. The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
3. Voyage in Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (Rossellini, 1953)
4. Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein, 1945/1958)
5. Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
6. Confidential Report/ Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1956)
7. Ordet (Dreyer, 1955)
8. Ugetsu monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)
9. L'Atalante (Vigo, 1934)
10. The Wedding March (Stroheim, 1927)
11. Under Capricorn (Hitchcock, 1949)
12. Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin, 1947)

Interesting left-field choice also for Hitchcock, "Under Capricorn" is generally regarded as one of the more turgid entries in his canon, just as Arkadin is down the Welles rank.

Another trivial connection: "Under Capricorn" stars Joseph Cotten.