There's something funny about a film with no definitive cut (directed by fabulist Orson Welles) dealing with the many lives of one man. That man is aging crime lord Mr. Gregory Arkadin, a force of evil who hires young hoodlum Guy Van Stratten (Robert Arden) to track down the origins of Arkadin. The twisting plot and timeline is so complex as to make a summary pointless, but the film is essentially a journey in which Van Stratten attempts to extricate Arkadin's history from the webs and spiders. Despite the film's use of Van Stratten as a protagonist, Arkadin (and his own attempts to erase all past connections) remains the fascinating center of the film. The legends we hear about Arkadin suggest many things, with the only constants being immorality and power. By the time he finally appears (behind a mask at a ball held in his castle), Welles has built the film's antagonist to a theatrical level. Arkadin is an imposing figure visually and verbally, with heavy makeup contributing to Welles's forceful performance. Add to this Arkadin's sinister anecdotes and shots that rarely lets us take in the villain from a normal angle and Arkadin becomes one of Welles's most menacing constructions.
While Arkadin seems to have the upper hand for most of the film, Van Stratten finally manages to use the only connection to humanity that Arkadin refuses to erase - his daughter (Paola Mori) - to force an endgame. With the key role of Arkadin's daughter in her father's downfall, the film questions whether severing all ties is possible.
But an illusion of this magnitude requires better props than Welles has in his kit. The film feels much more piecemeal than Kane (which makes sense considering the production issues) and for the most part, the key actors fail to distinguish themselves or achieve the level of theatricality that Welles musters. Robert Arden doesn't quite work as Guy Van Stratten. It would be one thing if he were only asked to be the Citizen Kane reporter, an anonymous instrument for the exploration of Arkadin's past. But he's playing a criminal who straddles the line between two-bit jobs and the big time while questioning his own morality and identity. He must engage with other more eccentric characters while still maintaining the audience's interest in Van Stratten. Instead, he wanders through the film, occasionally hitting on some of the toughness of Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly, but mostly just appearing hollow. In the small role of Raina Arkadin, Mori also fails to distinguish her character beside Welles's overbearing Arkadin. While acting and budget limitations weigh down the production, Welles uses other trickery (including a confusing narrative structure and heavy dubbing) to mitigate their effects.
Mr. Arkadin might have started as an excuse for Welles to shoot Europe and entertain with fables, but it became something darker and more interesting. It's by no means a smooth ride, but it presents a snapshot of 1950s Europe while capturing some disturbing and timeless elements of humanity.
One of the fascinating bits of the film is that we never see Arkadin's death. The beginning entices us with a tale of a pilot-less plane and we later learn that Arkadin has apparently abandoned it to kill himself, but not actually seeing Arkadin's body makes me think that Arkadin is still lurking somewhere, reinventing himself again.
Adding to the Third Man connection, Mr. Arkadin is apparently based on a few episodes of The Lives of Harry Lime that Welles allegedly wrote (although, as with a few works credited to Welles, the authorship of the episodes is in question).
Among the fine cast of European actors are Akim Tamiroff, Peter Van Eyck, Michael Redgrave, and - Auric Goldfinger himself - Gert Frobe.
Crew & Cast
Written & Directed by Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, F is for Fake, Touch of Evil)
Cast
Orson Welles - Gregory Arkadin
Robert Arden - Guy Van Stratten
Patricia Medina - Mily
Paolo Mori - Raina Arkadin
Akim Tamiroff - Jacob Zouk
Gregoire Aslan - Bracco
Peter Van Eyck - Thaddeus
Michael Redgrave - Burgomil Trebitsch