Directed by Orson Welles • 1955 • United States
Starring Orson Welles, Paola Mori, Robert Arden
Orson Welles’s MR. ARKADIN (a.k.a. CONFIDENTIAL REPORT) tells the story of an elusive billionaire who hires an American smuggler to investigate his past, leading to a dizzying descent into a cold-war European landscape. The film’s history is also marked by this vertigo. This version is new, and represents a “best guess” approach by film historians and archivists Stefan Drössler and Claude Bertemes. It follows Welles’s later statements, style, and continuity clues, and includes as much existing footage as possible.
Up Next in The Complete Mr. Arkadin
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MR. ARKADIN Commentary
Recorded exclusively for The Criterion Collection, in 2005, this commentary features Jonathan Rosenbaum, film critic for The Chicago Reader and author of Discovering Orson Welles, and James Naremore, author of The Magic World of Orson Welles (1989).
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On the Comprehensive Version of MR. A...
In the following documentary, produced in 2006, film historians and archivists Stefan Drössler and Claude Bertemes discuss the principles behind the creation of a new, unique version of MR. ARKADIN. Director and Orson Welles confidant Peter Bogdanovich shares his understanding of Welles’s intenti...
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Men of Mystery
In this video interview, recorded in London in January 2008, Orson Welles biographer Simon Callow (“Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu,” 1995) discusses late actor Robert Arden, producer Louis Dolivet, and the cameo by Michael Redgrave in MR. ARKADIN.
