Mr. Arkadin

Several differing versions of the film were released. In his 1991 essay "The Seven Arkadins", film historian Jonathan Rosenbaum identified seven different versions of the story, and since its initial publication, two more versions have emerged, including a novel and a stage play. When Welles missed an editing deadline, producer Louis Dolivet took the film out of his hands and released several edits of the film, none of which were approved by Welles. Adding to the confusion is a novel of the same title that was credited to Welles, though Welles claimed that he was unaware of the book's existence until he saw a copy in a bookshop. Welles's friend Maurice Bessy, a French screenwriter, is generally considered to be the author of the novel.

In his 1991 essay "The Seven Arkadins", film historian Jonathan Rosenbaum identified seven different versions of the story, and since the essay's initial publication, two more versions have emerged.[8]

1. Three episodes of the radio series The Lives of Harry Lime, written, directed by and starring Welles. The basic plot of a wealthy Mr. Arkadian (spelt with three As in this version) commissioning a confidential report on his former life can be found in the episode "Man of Mystery" (first broadcast 11 April 1952), while the episode "Murder on the Riviera" (first broadcast 23 May 1952) and the final episode "Greek Meets Greek" (first broadcast 25 July 1952) both contain plot elements repeated in the film. Note that in the film, the popular Harry Lime character from The Third Man is replaced by the less sympathetic Guy Van Stratten, since Welles did not own the copyright to the Lime character as character rights had been bought by Harry Alan Towers for the Lives of Harry Lime radio series.[9]

2. Masquerade, an early version of the screenplay of what would eventually become Mr. Arkadin, has substantial differences from the film versions. The screenplay follows a strictly chronological structure rather than the back-and-forth structure of the film. Many of the scenes in the film are set in different countries, and a lengthy sequence in Mexico is entirely missing from the final film.

Crucially, none of the versions available before 2006 contained all the footage found in the others; each had some elements missing from other versions, and each has substantial editing differences from the others.

3. The main Spanish-language version of Mr. Arkadin (93 mins) was filmed back-to-back with the English-language version and was the first to be released, premiering in Madrid in March 1955. Although the cast and crew were largely the same, two characters were played by Spanish actors: Amparo Rivelles plays Baroness Nagel and Irene Lopez Heredia plays Sophie Radzweickz Martinez. The two scenes with the actresses were reshot in Spanish, but all others had Spanish dubbing over English dialogue. This version credits Robert Arden as "Bob Harden".

4. There is a second, longer Spanish-language cut of Mr. Arkadin, which was unknown to Rosenbaum at the time he wrote The Seven Arkadins. (He confessed in the essay to having seen only brief clips of one version.) This version credits Robert Arden as "Mark Sharpe".[10]

5. Confidential Report (98 mins), the most common European release print of Mr. Arkadin, premiered in London in August 1955. Differences to this version include off-screen narration from Van Stratten. Rosenbaum speculates that the editing of this version was based on an early draft of Welles' screenplay, as its exposition is far simpler than that of the "Corinth" version.

6. The "Corinth" version (99 mins) is named after Corinth Films, the initial U.S. distributor of the film.[11] Until the 2006 re-edit, it was believed to be the closest version to Welles' conception. Peter Bogdanovich discovered its existence in 1961 and secured its first U.S. release in 1962, seven years after alternative versions of the film were released in Europe.

7. The most widely seen version of Mr. Arkadin (95 mins) is the U.S. release version which entirely removes the film's flashback structure and presents a simpler, linear narrative. Rosenbaum describes it as "the least satisfactory version", which is a "clumsily truncated" edit of the "Corinth" version, often editing out half-sentences, making some dialogue incomprehensible.[12]

This version is often erroneously thought of as being in the public domain but as the film is a European co-production its copyright does not expire until 2068, seventy years after the 1998 death of the last surviving co-creator, composer Paul Misraki.[13] The vast majority of DVD releases are very poor quality bootlegs of the US version.

8. The novel Mr. Arkadin was first published in French in Paris in 1955, and then in English in 1956, both in London and New York. Welles was credited as author, and the book's dustjacket boasted: "It is perhaps surprising that Orson Welles … has not written a novel before."

"I didn't write one word of that novel. Nor have I ever read it," Welles told Peter Bogdanovich. "Somebody wrote it in French to be published in serial form in the newspapers. You know — to promote the picture. I don't know how it got under hardcovers, or who got paid for that."[14] It was serialised in the U.K. newspaper the Daily Express in 1955.

Welles always denied authorship of the book, and French actor-writer Maurice Bessy, who is credited as having translated the book into French, was long rumoured to be the real author. Rosenbaum suggested that the book was written in French and then translated into English, as lines from the script were approximations that seemed to have been translated from English to French and back to English. Research by film scholar François Thomas in the papers of Louis Dolivet has uncovered documentary proof that Bessy was indeed the author.[15]

9. Whilst no version of the film can claim to be definitive as Welles never finished editing the film, this version (105 mins) is likely the closest to Welles's original vision,[16] though the creators of this restored version express their doubts as to the "correctness" of altering another artist's work. It was compiled in 2006 by Stefan Drössler of the Munich Film Museum and Claude Bertemes of the Cinémathèque municipale de Luxembourg, with both Peter Bogdanovich and Jonathan Rosenbaum giving technical assistance. It uses all available English-language footage, and attempts to follow Welles's structure and editing style as closely as possible and also incorporates his comments over the years on where the other editions of the film went wrong. However, it remains an approximation; for instance, Welles remarked that his version of the film began with a woman's body (Mily) on a beach, including a close-up that makes her identity apparent. Whilst the Criterion edit restores the film opening on a woman's body on the beach, only a long shot exists (taken from the Corinth version) in which it is unclear whose body it is; no close-up of Mily could be used, as the footage no longer exists.

The Criterion Collection release includes the following:

• The "Corinth" version of the film
• The Confidential Report version of the film
• Commentary tracks by Welles film scholars Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore
• A copy of the novel
• Clips from one of the Spanish-language versions
• The three Harry Lime radio episodes on which the film was based

The Criterion Collection release is now out of print.[17]