322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

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Antoine Doinel
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#276 Post by Antoine Doinel » Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:09 pm

Those are some good points Ishmael, but me for it ultimately doesn't add up. For all the mystery of Arkadin, his daughter never really suspects him of anything (unless I missed it) and the whole operation is brought up because of Arkadin's paranoia. Had he not bothered going down this path at all, everything would've been avoided. Again, he spent 30 years carefully cultivating a new identity only to put it all on the line with some guy he barely knows, who may or may not have the resources to actually find out substantial information about his past.

It boils down to personal preference with this kind of argument. With me, it bothered me too much to really enjoy the film, while for others it's not an issue. Not a big deal really, but of the Welles' films I've seen thus far, this one is by far my least favorite.

Ishmael
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#277 Post by Ishmael » Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:42 pm

Antoine Doinel wrote:Had he not bothered going down this path at all, everything would've been avoided. Again, he spent 30 years carefully cultivating a new identity only to put it all on the line with some guy he barely knows, who may or may not have the resources to actually find out substantial information about his past.
Oh, I completely agree with that, but that's what makes Arkadin's story a tragedy. He's his own worst enemy.

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psufootball07
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#278 Post by psufootball07 » Sat Apr 25, 2009 12:15 am

Received this set today, any opinions as to which version I should watch first?

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cysiam
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#279 Post by cysiam » Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:56 am

psufootball07 wrote:Received this set today, any opinions as to which version I should watch first?
I would start with the Comprehensive version first, as you can then move on the others and get a better feel for what was altered.

frostyak
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#280 Post by frostyak » Sat Apr 25, 2009 3:35 pm

I would agree with starting with the Comprehensive version first.

I really love this collection and packaging that Criterion offered. Definitely one of my favorites.

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psufootball07
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#281 Post by psufootball07 » Sat Apr 25, 2009 3:40 pm

I agree 100% about the packaging, I knew it was a digi and that it was one of the larger sets ala The Furies, Last Emperor or Vampyr, but I didnt know it was larger than the entire Varda set.

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Florinaldo
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#282 Post by Florinaldo » Sun Apr 26, 2009 9:53 am

The viewing order depends on your own expectations towards to this problematic film. Since I wanted to see how Welles' original concepts got progressively whittled down, I started with the comprehensive version (knowing full well it is not a director's cut, but is probably the closest to his original intention - who knows how he himself would have edited it down if he had kept control over it), then the Corinth, and finally Confidential Report, which I had seen in French many years ago.

If you want to see a building-upwards effet, you should probably reverse the order. It is a fascinating exercise whichever order you chose and I come back frequently to the 3 versions for comparative viewings; each version throws some explanatory light onto the others. And the 2 commentaries are also very relevant and interesting.

skweeker
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#283 Post by skweeker » Mon Apr 27, 2009 5:52 pm

Could Mr. Arkadin have been modeled on Mr. Gulbenkian?

Arkadin - Gulbenkian... hmmmm.

Both were mysterious euro-billionaire businessmen of exotic origin and somewhat unknown (at the time, in the mid-fifties) sources of wealth (Gulbenkian actually got 5% of the gross proceeds from the sale of any oil from Mesopotamia (now Iraq and Kuwait) from 1912 or so until his death in 1955: a commission payable for helping negotiate the oil rights, between the then-overlords of the area, the Ottoman Empire, and Anglo/French petroleum companies. A sweet deal indeed.)

frostyak
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#284 Post by frostyak » Tue Apr 28, 2009 7:57 pm

Very, very interesting. Now I have yet another interesting historical figure to research.

Also, perhaps of note, he had a daughter named Rita...Arkadin's was Raina. Not a huge stretch.

krislandis
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#285 Post by krislandis » Thu Mar 01, 2012 3:51 pm

Did any one elses copy of this have an error on disc 1? It becomes unplayable during the scene where Arkadin is meeting the Frenchwoman in the restaurant. The "comprehensive" version plays fine, but the "Corinth" version has this error. I'm hoping it was just this one copy and amazon will exchange it for a working one.

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BSarge
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#286 Post by BSarge » Thu Mar 01, 2012 6:54 pm

Yes, my copy did the same thing. It sticks and then eventually skips forward for a few seconds.

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Ovader
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#287 Post by Ovader » Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:10 pm

Quite late in seeing the above issue as mine freezes shortly after the 53 minute mark at the meeting of Suzanne Flon as Baroness Nagel. I contacted Mulvaney and he said to send the disc to his attention to:
The Criterion Collection
215 Park Ave. So. 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

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Ovader
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#288 Post by Ovader » Mon Oct 13, 2014 9:22 pm


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hearthesilence
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#289 Post by hearthesilence » Thu Jan 29, 2015 7:15 pm

As much as I love Welles, I've always resisted watching this film. I've seen bits and pieces, and something about them always made me reluctant to dive into this one.

So after a meeting was cancelled today, I went to the library and picked it up. I'm skipping right to the third disc, the 2006 Criterion cut. First, I took a peak at those outtakes, which have an extremely rare example of Welles directing (in this case, actors in close-up - usually from off-screen, in one case over his shoulder). Wow, this guy REALLY meticulously shaped his close-ups, from the positioning of the chin and especially the line reading, virtually acting for them in many instances. (Wonder if he'd do that with his Mercury players? I don't think the ones here were especially well-known as great thespians.)

The set-up is GREAT. The opening shot that pans down to the body, to the plane and the narration, and those beautiful snow shots (love the way they move in the air) and the shots leading up to that room to begin the story. And the rest is a surprising black comedy. A gem and possibly a great one.

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Drucker
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#290 Post by Drucker » Fri Jan 30, 2015 12:46 am

Saw Confidential Report in theaters yesterday, was going to write it up this weekend in the Welles thread, but it is so much worse than the Comprehensive Version. Honestly the closest I felt to calling a Welles film bad. Again, this version, specifically.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#291 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:23 am

I know for historical reasons cuts like those should be reserved, but Jesus, leave them to the academics. I generally hate multiple cut box sets for that reason alone. If you're lucky, you get two worthy cuts to view, but unless I'm writing a term paper, I don't have any interest in seeing something with no regard to Welles' intentions and that he completely disowned.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#292 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:19 pm

FWIW, saw the Corinth version a few days ago. With the Criterion cut (aka "Comprehensive version") being my first exposure to the film, the Corinth version felt scrambled. Not bad, but poorly shuffled. Missed the opening shot of the woman on the beach, I didn't like the opening credits over those beautiful shots, obscuring so much of the falling snow…in terms of order, I really didn't like how they split that party scene in two, making them appear to be two different events occurring at two different times, despite similarities in dress, location, etc.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#293 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Feb 16, 2015 9:54 am

hearthesilence wrote:FWIW, saw the Corinth version a few days ago. With the Criterion cut (aka "Comprehensive version") being my first exposure to the film, the Corinth version felt scrambled. Not bad, but poorly shuffled.
The Corinth version is really an unfinished rough cut, making it difficult to judge on its own. The opening shot of the woman's body on the beach is only in the "Comprehensive version" because Welles made a statement years later that he had wanted to open the film with that shot - the line "...and the murder", which was edited out of Welles' opening narration for CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, seems to support the choice of using that shot in this way. Also, note the repeated action (from a different camera angle) near the end of the scene where Zouk and Van Stratten struggle with the blanket - Welles would often print alternate takes and edit them next to each other in his rough cut to determine which one he liked better in the context of the scene. For subsequent fine edits, he would naturally only retain one take. However, in the Corinth version and in the released version of CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, two takes of the same action made it into the edit. The producers of the "Comprehensive version" assumed (correctly, I believe) that this was a mistake due to the film being taken away from Welles' hands before he had finished with it and eliminated the redundant shot.

cinemartin

Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#294 Post by cinemartin » Mon Feb 16, 2015 10:00 am

I thought I read something Francois Thomas wrote about how Confidential Report retained much more of Welles' work than previously believed - am I correct? I remember him saying the producers' changed Welles' intended structure around, but the scenes themselves are more to Welles' liking than the Corinth Version. I can't remember if the Comprehensive Version took this into account or not.

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hearthesilence
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#295 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Feb 16, 2015 11:57 am

Roger Ryan wrote:The Corinth version is really an unfinished rough cut, making it difficult to judge on its own...
Gotcha. It was a little confusing how some of these cuts came into being and to what purpose.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#296 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Feb 16, 2015 1:21 pm

cinemartin wrote:I thought I read something Francois Thomas wrote about how Confidential Report retained much more of Welles' work than previously believed - am I correct? I remember him saying the producers' changed Welles' intended structure around, but the scenes themselves are more to Welles' liking than the Corinth Version. I can't remember if the Comprehensive Version took this into account or not.
I'm not certain if there is much, if any, difference in how the individual scenes are edited between the two. I know that the producers of the "Comprehensive Version" relied on the 35mm negative for CONFIDENTIAL REPORT whenever possible since it was the best quality. I believe the Criterion release of the Corinth version was, in effect, recreated by supplanting the 16mm Corinth footage with the 35mm negative footage for the applicable scenes/shots.

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Cagliostro
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#297 Post by Cagliostro » Mon Feb 16, 2015 5:43 pm

cinemartin wrote:I thought I read something Francois Thomas wrote about how Confidential Report retained much more of Welles' work than previously believed - am I correct?
Here is what Thomas writes, from the Complete Arkadin Criterion booklet:
Yet, what is more important, the overall structure or the editing of individual sequences? In this case, I think the latter. From such clues as the fact that the Dolivet version contains many lines that Welles rewrote and redubbed after the time of the early, temporary cut known as the Corinth version we can conclude that Confidential Report represents a more refined stage of Welles's editing, dubbing, and scoring in certain places. This is most plainly true of the scene of Bracco's death, the beginning of the masked ball episode, and the sequence where Arkadin commisions the investigation of his past from Van Stratten. Why, then, would we want to go back to earlier steps of Welles's work? Dolivet actually did very little reediting of scenes, beyond tailoring their very beginning or very end to the new structure every now and then.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#298 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Feb 17, 2015 9:15 am

Cagliostro wrote: Here is what Thomas writes, from the Complete Arkadin Criterion booklet:
...From such clues as the fact that the Dolivet version contains many lines that Welles rewrote and redubbed after the time of the early, temporary cut known as the Corinth version we can conclude that Confidential Report represents a more refined stage of Welles's editing, dubbing, and scoring in certain places. This is most plainly true of the scene of Bracco's death...
I should have taken the time to reread the booklet...or maybe watched the two versions again! However, doesn't Bogdanovich claim in his interview that the re-dubbing of Bracco in his death scene (the changed dialogue spelling out the plot in a more blatant way) went against Welles' wishes? I guess this is why the film is such a mystery: no one is quite sure which direction Welles wanted to go with it and Welles never cared about the film enough to comment extensively on it. I'll stand by the "Comprehensive version" as my preferred edition - it has the best continuity and this is a film that needs all the continuity it can get.

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Drucker
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Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#299 Post by Drucker » Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:09 am

Yes, regarding Bracco's death scene, Welles' preferred the "I want to tell you a secret" more than the "I want revenge" line (or whatever it is). He preferred the message being positive, I believe. I think this is spelled out in a commentary, but I know I've passed that thought somewhere.

cinemartin

Re: 322 The Complete Mr. Arkadin

#300 Post by cinemartin » Tue Feb 17, 2015 12:27 pm

Didn't Welles dub the line himself in both versions? I may be misremembering, but if he did dub it, I would think he wouldn't say a line that was against his wishes. I agree that this film needs all the help it can get in terms of continuity, but that's also a reason I find it fascinating. And I think there is some truth to saying Welles never cared enough to comment directly on it. I feel like he enjoyed the process of making films and once the situation became less than enjoyable, he just left, leaving other people to sort out this mess that probably never really made complete sense to anyone - Welles included!

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