Orson Welles (1955)

Orson Welles’s judgment, as quoted in his official biography by Barbara Leaming, was that:

‘More completely than any other picture of mine has been hurt by anybody, Arkadin was destroyed because they completely changed the entire form of it:  the whole order of it, the whole point of it … Ambersons is nothing compared to Arkadin!’

Not only is The Magnificent Ambersons notorious as a film maudit – Welles’s moviemaking from that point onwards might be termed an oeuvre maudit.  In describing Mr Arkadin in the above terms, he knows whereof he speaks.  The picture was released in Britain (with the title Confidential Report) and Spain in 1955 and in other parts of Western Europe the following year.   It didn’t get an American release until October 1962.

The film has two main characters:  the eponymous Arkadin, a mysterious business tycoon and socialite, and Guy Van Stratten, a small-time American smuggler, working in Italy in the aftermath of World War II.  On the Naples waterfront one night, Van Stratten witnesses the death of a man called Bracco who, before he expires, gasps out to Van Stratten two names, one of which is Gregory Arkadin.  Van Stratten, motivated (as I understood it) by self-interest rather than the pursuit of justice, resolves to track Arkadin down.  Mr Arkadin was made largely in Spain but also includes sequences shot in London, Paris, Munich, the French Riviera and Switzerland.  That list of locations hints at the international scope of Arkadin’s influence and Van Stratten’s detective work (although both extend beyond Europe:  there’s a Mexican episode too).

I assume the version of Mr Arkadin screened by BFI this July was what’s described by Wikipedia as the ‘Criterion edit’ of 2006:

‘Whilst no version of the film can claim to be definitive as Welles never finished editing the film, this is likely to remain the closest version to Welles’ original vision. … It uses all available English-language footage, and attempts to follow Welles’ planned structure and editing style as closely as possible, incorporating his comments over the years on where the other edits went wrong. However, it still only remains an approximation …’

The film I saw was often visually impressive.  The camerawork can be strongly disorienting, through the angles Welles favours and the speed at which the camera moves.  The repeated shots down flights of stairs and alleyways are arresting – so too the opening and closing images, involving an unpiloted aeroplane.  Mr Arkadin lacks narrative rhythm but one’s naturally inclined to blame the studio butchers for that, rather than its writer-director.  It’s harder, though, to absolve Welles of responsibility for the characters in the story and the way most of them are played.   Robert Arden as Van Stratten is embarrassingly inexpressive.  The cast also includes, among others, Akim Tamiroff, Grégoire Aslan, Michael Redgrave, Mischa Auer, Katina Paxinou, Suzanne Flon and Jack Watling.   That’s to say, some of the heavily accented English is genuine but, whether it is or not, most of the playing is too busy.  The result is characterisation that is often described as ‘delicious’ but which I find indigestible.  (Katina Paxinou and Suzanne Flon are honourable exceptions to this, and Jack Watling is OK in a pretty feeble role.  Paola Mori, who plays Arkadin’s daughter and who became Welles’s third wife, is an exception too but only because, like Robert Arden, she doesn’t seem up to acting, let alone overacting.)

Orson Welles’s story and screenplay were inspired by episodes of The Adventures of Harry Lime radio series, a spin-off to Carol Reed’s The Third Man, in which Welles famously played Harry.  As well as casting himself as Arkadin, Welles reads the voiceover at the start of the film:

‘On December 25^th, an airplane was sighted off the coast of Barcelona.  It was flying empty.  … Investigation of this case reached into the highest circles … and the scandal was very nearly responsible for the fall of at least one European government.  This motion picture is a fictionalized reconstruction leading up to … the appearance last Christmas morning of the empty plane.’

This has flavours of both the radio War of the Worlds and the newsreel framework of Citizen Kane and, when Arkadin eventually appears, he looks a cross between the elderly Charles Foster Kane and Mephistopheles.  Unfortunately, Welles’ bizarre hair and make-up, his calculated air of mystery and his richly diabolical laugh (heard too often) turn Arkadin into a ludicrous rather than a charismatic figure.  Whatever others may have done to disfigure Mr Arkadin, you get the feeling that Orson Welles was a major contributor too.  On this occasion, he seems less a cinema auteur than a man playing his greatest hits in hope rather than expectation.

31 July 2015