The Complete Mr. Arkadin
June 2006 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Film critics and historians hail Orson Welles as one of the greatest filmmakers ever, yet many of his movies were draped in controversy. Perhaps the most contentious of them all was what came to be known as Confidential Report, which Welles titled Mr. Arkadin. Welles wrote, directed and starred in the movie, yet he never finished a final cut of it. There are five different versions -- two Spanish and three English -- and only one of them tries to stay true to his vision. Welles friend and admirer Peter Bogdanovich says that "Arkadin was the most-butchered film of [Welles's] career." It’s a telling comment in light of the fiasco that turned The Magnificent Ambersons, the film that followed Citizen Kane, into a lamentable film fragment that displays only flashes of Wellesian brilliance instead of standing as the cinematic masterpiece it should have been.

The plot of Mr. Arkadin is reminiscent of The Third Man. Welles plays the mysterious title character whose identity others spend considerable effort trying to uncover. Gregory Arkadin, however, is a wealthy overprotective father who doesn't want his daughter (Paola Mori) to know the secrets in his distant past. He hires an American smuggler (Robert Arden) to investigate him and thereby find out what others know. This is a hazardous assignment, as others who ask about Arkadin's past turn up dead. While Mr. Arkadin lacks the intricate depth of Welles’s best work, it has some of his trademarks, including shadowy, angular cinematography that heightens the plot's inherent drama, and eccentric characters who dominate the story because of their magnetic presence and abundant flaws.

The extras of this three-DVD set are extraordinary, even by Criterion's high standards. Before you delve into them, you'll have to decide which version of the movie to watch. Three are included: the Corinth version discovered by Peter Bogdanovich in the early 1960s and believed to be the most recent cut under Welles's creative control; Confidential Report, which the producer finished after forbidding Welles's input from the editing process; and a new all-inclusive version that represents a guess as to what the film would have been had Welles been able to exercise complete control. Each version has its own commentary and associated features. Also included is a paperback copy of Welles's novel, Mr. Arkadin. Criterion has done a fine job of cleaning up the image of each version of the film, but there are still passages where fading or noise was too great to fix completely. Anyone wanting to investigate this movie can begin and end with this set.

Like other Welles films, Mr. Arkadin makes one wonder what it would have been if Welles had been able to complete it. With this DVD set and its reconstruction of the movie, the Criterion Collection has performed an important service for film buffs and Welles scholars, and set a new standard for presenting movies with sketchy pasts. Now if they could only do the same for The Magnificent Ambersons.

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