The Complete Mr. Arkadin
Orson Welles's 'Most Butchered Film' Finally Reconstructed on DVD
Criterion released a new, carefully reconstructed version of "Mr. Arkadin" alongside the two other known English-language versions.
"Mr. Arkadin", based on a previously unpublished novel authored by Welles, is a variation on themes from "Citizen Kane" and "The Third Man". It focuses on the characters of a wealthy, powerful international tycoon with a mysterious past who goes under the false name "Gregory Arkadin", and small-time crook Guy van Stratten who happens to come across a dying man at an Italian harbor who reveals to him Arkadin's name. Eager to profit from his knowledge, van Stratten approaches Arkadin by acquainting the latter's daughter Raina. Arkadin then hires Guy to find out about his own (Arkadin's) past, pretending to suffer from amnesia. Thus Guy finds himself on a mission of tracking down old acquaintances from Arkadin's former life, who subsequently are murdered one by one under mysterious circumstances .
Orson Welles once said: "That film was taken away from me completely, and was totally destroyed in the cutting. That was the real disaster of my life." Welles was known to spend endless time in the editing room, working slowly to refine and polish his films, and his tardiness often led to the project being taken away from his hands by an infuriated producer who was keen on meeting his deadlines. The most notorious case in which this happened was the case of "Mr. Arkadin", of which altogether at least 5 known different edits existed by the time of this new release, none of which had been completed or even approved by Welles himself.
The five known versions prior to the new release are: the Corinth version (believed to be the earliest English-language version), Confidential Report (the official 1956 European release finished by producer Louis Dolivet), two different cuts of a Spanish-language version, and an American short-cut of the Corinth version. Scholars are still looking for the first British version of "Confidential Report" which premiered in 1955 and is thought to be slightly different from the general European release of the following year.
The 'comprehensive version', put together by film historians Stefan Droessler and Claude Bertemes on the basis of clues in Welles's interviews, working materials, as well as early scripts and versions is not meant to be either the "definite version" or a "director's cut". Rather, it is meant to come closest to Welles's known intentions and make the film better comprehensible than the earlier edits. It succeeds well, except that the viewer will be confronted with occasional changes in picture quality as pieces from the most editorially polished "Confidential Report" are followed by pieces from one or the other of the earlier versions of the film.
Studio: Criterion
Release Date: April 18, 2006
DVD Features:
* Available Subtitles: English
* Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 1.0)
* Disc One: Mr. Arkadin: The Corinth Version, 1955, 99 minutes
* Disc Two: Confidential Report, 1955, 98 minutes
* Disc Three: Mr. Arkadin: The Comprehensive Version, 2006, 105 minutes
* Audio commentary by scholars Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore on the Corinth Version
* Interviews with Orson Welles biographer Simon Callow, star Robert Arden, radio producer Harry Alan Towers, director Peter Bogdanovich, and film archivists Stephan Droessler and Claude Bertemes
* Three half-hour episodes of the radio program The Lives of Harry Lime, upon which the film is based
* The new featurette On the Comprehensive Version
* Outtakes, rushes, and alternate scenes from the film
* Extensive stills gallery
* 36-page booklet with essays on the film and its different versions
* Mr. Arkadin, the novel, with a new preface by Robert Polito
