A Diaster Only a Genius Could Make

All three movies seem to have been ruined more by studio interference than anything else - so in that way, perhaps they share the same scars.

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While certainly not on the same level as Citizen Kane, I liked it a whole lot better than Touch of Evil. I have no idea why it is regarded so poorly, the film is easily one of Welles' best, and entertaining through and through.

Last film seen: The Manchurian Candidate 8/10

I agree. Overacted, incoherent and painful to watch. It looked like Welles wanted to make his "own" Third Man but could not match the competence and artistry of Carol Reed and made this piece of sh*t instead.
And the accents were so thick and the sound so poor, that I had to constantly rewatch at every line just to understand what the actors were saying. Did Welles purposely tell the actors to slur and mumble?
And it makes no sense that Arkadian did all this just so his daughter wouldn't find out he was part of some gang in his past.
What a wreck!

Hm... Mr Arkadin is certainly flawed and uneven and kind of needlessly confusing... and it has the typical Wellesian annoyance of being too fast paced for its own good - the transitions between scenes, often jumping from one country to another, occurring in a rather frenzied fashion, just zooming from one conversation to another without allowing the audience to really find their bearings from one situation to next (well, that may be the point, but it sure didn´t work for me... and, at any rate, doing it constantly diminishes the effect, anyway). Also, like most Welles´s later period films, it´s overly saturated with talk. So, yeah, a lesser film in the master´s canon no doubt. However, there are also plenty of impressive aspects about it and some truly genius ways of filmic communication - like the magnificent touch in the end, when the demise of Arkadin is presented via air control radio forwarding nothing but the sound of plane engine(s). Also, the dialogue is frequently witty and the cinematography frequently extraordinarily evocative. Doesn´t hurt that Welles has actually something to say, as well. So overall, it´s certainly a lot more accomplished than Dune (never thought of that as a total disaster, btw) and possibly Heaven´s Gate. 6,5-7/10 seems an appropriate enough rating.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

It's definitely not as bad as Lynch's "Dune". "Mr. Arkadin" is a decent film. It's just not a good film. A couple people here have said that it's a "brilliant" film. I don't know what their definition of brilliance is, but it's clearly very different from mine. Brilliance, to me, means thematic depth and subtextual profundity. It means formal mastery and a visual style that allows the film's form to parallel its content. "Mr. Arkadin", like anything by Welles, is a very well-shot film with high quality direction and photography. But the editing is not impressive, the film lacks artistry, shots are never held long enough to imbue the film with any real mood or atmosphere, and ultimately there is very little substance. There's next to nothing going on beneath the surface. The film's themes are shallow at best and nonexistent at worst. Welles definitely had his strengths as a filmmaker, and they show here, but he also had weaknesses, and they, too, show here. Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice", Buñuel's "That Obscure Object of Desire", Bergman's "In the Presence of a Clown", Godard's "In Praise of Love", Bresson's "The Devil, Probably", Antonioni's "Red Desert", Von Trier's "Europa", Tati's "PlayTime", Ozu's "Late Spring", Fellini's "City of Women", Pasolini's "Medea", Ôshima's "Sing a Song of Sex", Tarr's "Werckmeister Harmonies", Kiarostami's "The Wind Will Carry Us" -- these are films to which one could apply the label "brilliant". But "Mr. Arkadin"? I'm sorry, but no way. I fail to see where the brilliance could possibly be in this film, and as usual with films that people love but don't know why, they call the film "brilliant" but then go on to say absolutely nothing about what makes the film brilliant. As always, viewers fail to distinguish between how much they personally enjoyed a film, and how great of a film it is, objectively speaking. These are two very different things, but most people fail to make a distinction between them.

this movie felt like a complete waste of time to me, it had nothing going for it, not one memorable scene or line of dialogue

it will be forgotten by the time i wake up tomorrow

what was Welles thinking with this one i'll never know





so many movies, so little time