In defense of Robert Arden as Guy Van Stratten

[JasonH]

It’s practically tradition for reviews of MR. ARKADIN – including positive ones – to single out Robert Arden as a weak link among the cast, a virtual unknown who was completely out of his depth in satisfying the requirements of a leading man, a sore thumb amidst a colorful gallery of memorable supporting players. In their commentary track, Jonathan Rosenbaum and James Naremore speculated that this reaction is in part an artifact of equating the deliberately repellent qualities of the character with some sort of shortcoming of the actor himself, drawing a parallel to the divisive reception to Tim Holt in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

I agree with this, but more than that I think Arden’s performance is especially successful if you view Van Stratten as principally a comic conception. It seems quite clear to me that this is the intention, never more so than in the scene where our hero is watching the religious ceremony wearing a Hawaiian shirt, disruptively grunting his confusion about the procession of the penitents while smoking a cigar and chewing gum at the same time. It’s hilariously over the top, and I think pretty indicative of the function Welles means the character to serve. The role, as scripted, is so aggressively unpleasant that it enters parody, and I think Arden delivers on that quite ably. The loutish behavior is just so exaggerated that it keeps the character more funny than unlikable to me.

Like a lot of characters in the movie, Guy and Mily are caricatures, in their case the uncultured, opportunistic Americans who stand out as fish out of water in the backdrop of old-world Europe. Part of the strange appeal of ARKADIN is the way Welles is smashing together seemingly incompatible elements of unsentimental, dime novel crime fiction with mythic, fairy tale grandiosity and romanticism. Van Stratten in many ways is the chief representative of the former, talking and swaggering like a low-rent lowlife who stepped out of the pages of second-rate pulp, while the larger-than-life Arkadin, with his parables and unlimited power, embodies the latter. The tension between these colliding genres throughout is in large part the bizarre pleasure of the movie.

All that to one side, I think Van Stratten’s lack of dimension has been somewhat overstated. Part of the reason the scrapbook scene with Sophie has the impact it does is due to the normally motormouthed Van Stratten’s silent reaction to her memories – it is the scene where we are most identified with him. The Munich segment inspires a degree sympathy for Van Stratten as the sheer extent to which he is a chicken in a pot becomes fully articulated. And after all, the whole romp is inadvertently set into motion in the first place by an act of kindness by Van Stratten, when he consoles the dying Bracco. Though he quickly proves to be deeply mercenary in nature, Van Stratten doesn’t yet know enough to have a profit motive when he lingers to listen to the man’s dying words, which is what lands him in jail.

As with most things ARKADIN, we’re left without a paddle on whether Welles in any way agreed with critical consensus on the lead he introduced, and whom he never worked with or seemingly even spoke of again. Holt’s casting in AMBERSONS continues to be somewhat controversial to this day, but we know from the effusive comments by Welles years after the fact that the director absolutely got what he bargained for and more out of Holt, was wildly pleased by the outcome of his decision. His radio silence on Arden by contrast invites speculation, though it’s probably unwise to read too much into it given Welles’s unwillingness to talk about ARKADIN in general. But whether Welles was happy with the work or not, I think Robert Arden’s would-be star turn hasn’t been done justice in most critical assessments, and is in any case largely misread. To me his performance is pretty amusing and more of a piece with the movie’s outrageous identity - not to mention Welles’s undeniable fondness for directing performances in the area of camp - than it is generally credited for.

[tonyw]

A very good defense. Like Robert Ayres, Arden was one of those familiar faces often seen in 50s UK TV productions but made little impression as a leading actor. Born in London from British-American parentage, both he and Medina certainly represent those brash ugly Americans who flooded to a post-war-ridden Europe benefiting from an affluent economy and eager to make their own "art of the deal" in many ways. Scouse-born Medina later married Joseph Cotten. They are ideally cast as opportunist Yanks who find that Old Europe as in a Henry James novel dominates them until circumstances defeat them in the same way that befalls the formerly gigantic figure of Ogre Arkadin.

[Steve Paradis]

But he's not Philip Marlowe, is he?
He's a low-grade chancer along the lines of Eric Ambler's Arthur Abdul Simpson, blundering his way in and out of good things that go bad. He's a perfect patsy for Arkadin who uses him as a stalking horse to weed his past. When he does find out the truth, it's by chance, and no one is more surprised than Arkadin.

[Le Chiffre]

I've never had a problem with Robert Arden as Van Stratton. IIRC, Richard Basehart was Welles' original choice for the role, but he was not available. He probably would have been better, but Arden had already worked with Welles as part of the LIVES OF HARRY LIME radio team, and their chemistry seems just fine to me. I don't have a big problem with Paola Mori as Raina either, although she was explicitly cited by producer Louis Dolivet as a prime reason for taking Welles to court over the film.

[JasonH]

Thanks to the research of François Thomas, it's clearer today that the lawsuit was primarily about fairly credible breaches of contract, while the more colorful, petty-sounding items such as the director's intemperance and ruinous partiality in casting his fiance were tossed in as part of a "throw everything at the wall" strategy. Or, as Welles memorably mocked it:

blunderbuss, catch-all phraseology, naked generalizations, unsupported inferences and patent irrelevancies.

[Le Chiffre]

Of course, Welles' hale-and-hearty public contempt eventually turned to privately begging Dolivet to call off the lawsuit.

Thanks for that NYT link, Jason. It's good to have old newspaper articles available since they provide precise dates about certain events which allows for some interesting cross-referencing.

So Dolivet started putting his case against Welles together in April of 1958, a couple of weeks before the opening of TOUCH OF EVIL. That film bombed in its initial American release, which may or may not have persuaded Dolivet to put his lawsuit on the shelf. But by September 1961, when Dolivet first filed his case in a New York court, TOE had acquired a big reputation in Europe, and had also started to become popular on college campuses in America. Plus at that time Welles was filming an adaptation of a classic novel, THE TRIAL, with an impressive international cast. I'm just speculating, but it is interesting timing.

It was also around this time that Bogdanovich found the "Corinth" version of Arkadin, and arranged for its release in America. Wiki says that release happened in 1962, but the butchered "US Release Version" was released in October the same year, which seems strange, unless the Corinth was released early in the year, perhaps in New York only, and then withdrawn to be, as Rosenbaum put it, "clumsily truncated" into the linear version we all know from cheap DVDs. Still some unanswered questions, such as when and where the Corinth version played in U.S. theaters, if it did.

[JasonH]

I do believe that the Corinth version only played at the The New Yorker Theater in 1962 when it was freshly discovered. So it technically has the distinction of being the version that premiered in the U.S., but it seems the mangled version was the one that properly got circulated thereafter, though it may have been especially ubiquitous on television. It's still not clear to me who ordered that hatchet job be made.

Neither is it clear to me when the Corinth version started becoming more available. Corinth Films itself wasn't founded until 1977, and I don't know when they acquired MR. ARKADIN, but presumably this cut started becoming more defacto in the U.S. after that. It's also the version that was broadcast by The City University of New York in 2002, so it must have had some kind of reasonable footprint before the arrival of the Criterion set.

There's a part of me that suspects the butchered, totally linear version is the one Welles actually ended up being exposed to, but there's no way to get clarity on what he eventually saw. A further mystery is an allusion by Welles to two lost scenes. From Jonathan Rosenbaum's "The Seven ARKADINs":

In This Is Orson Welles, Welles maintains that at least two important scenes of his were eliminated from all the released versions of ARKADIN. This would seem to be corroborated by Frank Brady’s citation, in his Welles biography, of an undated New York Herald Tribune story in which Welles complained that fourteen minutes were removed from his version. To Bogdanovich, Welles cited another party scene and an additional scene between Arkadin and Van Stratten, both of which showed Arkadin “as a sentimental, rather maudlin Russian drunk”; Arkadin’s character, he added, was inspired to some extent by Stalin.

Given Welles’s relative unfamiliarity with the release versions of his film -— which he clearly found painful to watch -— these remarks may have alluded to further material in Arkadin’s masked ball, or at the Christmas party in Munich (where we do see Arkadin drunk).Alternately, they may refer to two complete scenes of which we no longer have any record in any of. Since Welles had a penchant for revising his scripts while shooting —- and even, on occasion, revising dialogue while postdubbing and editing—-both hypotheses are plausible.

I have to admit I'm a little skeptical that Welles's memory can be trusted on this. It seems unlikely that pivotal scenes would be missing from the earliest cuts of the movie (of which the Corinth and the long Spanish cut are our representatives), and I'm not aware of anything along those lines being discovered among the many hours of workprint footage housed at the Cinémathèque municipale de Luxembourg. Ironically, the linear version is the least available nowadays, and good riddance, though it would be useful to be reminded just how much shorter it is than the other versions -- I don't think it's to the extent of fourteen minutes.

[Roger Ryan]

There seem to be a couple of scenes between Van Stratten and Arkadin where Arkadin comes off a "sentimental, rather maudlin Russian drunk" in the longest version we have (the "Comprehensive Version"). In any case, that's definitely an impression I've gotten from Welles' portrayal, so I don't know if we needed a further scene to expound on this. The "second party scene" strikes me as being a reference to the additional anecdote Arkadin tells his party guests regarding the tombstone dates marking the length of time townsfolk were able to maintain friendships. Its setup is identical to the more famous anecdote regarding the scorpion and the frog, and one might question the need of having both of them in the film. Nonetheless, it's not a stretch to presume that Welles meant "second party anecdote scene" when he referred to it as a "second party scene".

[Le Chiffre]

The "second party scene" strikes me as being a reference to the additional anecdote Arkadin tells his party guests regarding the tombstone dates marking the length of time townsfolk were able to maintain friendships. Its setup is identical to the more famous anecdote regarding the scorpion and the frog, and one might question the need of having both of them in the film.

I do think that the "Tombstone" anecdote fits the description, "rather sentimental and maudlin" pretty well, so my guess has always been that that scene is what Welles was referring to. Yes, the Corinth version gets by fine without it, but I like having both because together they humorously establish Arkadin as a compulsive storyteller, especially when drunk. This then sets up the most elaborate fairy tale that Arkadin lures Guy into his employment with, again while getting the two of them drunk.

I do believe that the Corinth version only played at the The New Yorker Theater in 1962 when it was freshly discovered. So it technically has the distinction of being the version that premiered in the U.S., but it seems the mangled version was the one that properly got circulated thereafter, though it may have been especially ubiquitous on television. It's still not clear to me who ordered that hatchet job be made.

Yes, to me that's become the $64,000 question; my guess would be Dolivet. Also, I wonder how widely that deliberate vandalism was circulated in theaters, if at all. For almost three decades it was the only version available to be seen in America, but I have no info of it ever being shown in a theater, only on TV and eventually VHS and DVD. This NYT review, dated October 12, 1962, is pretty clearly a review of the Corinth, since The New Yorker is indicated as the theater where it's playing, and the running time is listed as 99 minutes, while the mangled version runs 93. The review (by Bosley Crowther?) praises the film, but also trashes both Arden and Mori as "hopelessly inadequate":
https://www.nytimes.com/1962/10/12/arch ... 5vrbFwKj_Q

Neither is it clear to me when the Corinth version started becoming more available. Corinth Films itself wasn't founded until 1977, and I don't know when they acquired MR. ARKADIN, but presumably this cut started becoming more defacto in the U.S. after that. It's also the version that was broadcast by The City University of New York in 2002, so it must have had some kind of reasonable footprint before the arrival of the Criterion set.

The first I ever heard of the Corinth was around 1991 when I somehow heard rumors of a VHS edition that had that version instead of the linear mess that I was familiar with. Amazingly, the Corinth VHS Arkadin is still available on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/123088681703
At the time, I ordered a copy of it through a local video store and was stunned by what I saw when it arrived. But then, a few months later the Criterion laserdisc of CONFIDENTIAL REPORT came out and so began the journey to THE COMPLETE MR. ARKADIN in 2006.

[JasonH]

Speaking of the graveyard story, Thomas indulges in some dubious speculation about that scene in his essay, suggesting that it may have been reinstated by Dolivet as some sort of coded statement to his slippery friend. His evidence of this is that the scene is present in no previous extant cut of the movie before CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, and that its placement is arguably a little awkward. I don't know that I buy that, but it's an interesting thought.

In discussing his discovery of the Corinth version in the archives of M&A Alexander, Peter Bogdanovich sometimes remembered it as a 35mm print. Whether it's because it got lost or he simply misremembered, the Corinth version seems to have existed only as a 16mm print by the time Criterion began their work. The survival of the Spanish versions - especially the longer, unreleased cut - was crucial in preserving the Corinth, as their structure is said to hew fairly closely to the Corinth. (The Spanish version was readied earlier than the English version because it was originally intended to come out first, so it makes sense that the Corinth - which is the earliest cut of the English version in existence - would be comparable.) This made them the only high quality source for key transition scenes that CONFIDENTIAL REPORT lacked, and is the reason we can enjoy the Corinth in 35mm quality, with I think only a few stray bits stuck in beat up 16mm.

Since Criterion's superb effort is already twenty years old, I hope somebody will get around to digitally transferring all that material up to modern standards -- meaning 4K scans. Like a lot of Welles projects, it seems the elements for ARKADIN are scattered across different geographies, and they can only continue to rot. I do fear that a 4K re-release of the Criterion set would be considered impractical, because in addition to scanning everything anew, they'd have to start from scratch with the Corinth, due to the aforementioned need to reconstruct it from various sources for optimal quality. The Comprehensive Version is of course in a similar position.

I do believe that the Corinth version only played at the The New Yorker Theater in 1962 when it was freshly discovered. So it technically has the distinction of being the version that premiered in the U.S., but it seems the mangled version was the one that properly got circulated thereafter, though it may have been especially ubiquitous on television. It's still not clear to me who ordered that hatchet job be made.

Yes, to me that's become the $64,000 question; my guess would be Dolivet.

I'm not sure Dolivet is the likeliest culprit. Even the version we know as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT, which is more linear than the Corinth and which Dolivet presided over, is only in that shape because Warner Bros. insisted on it. Dolivet had to take out a loan to hire a new editor to recut the movie, throwing good money after bad to appease the distributor the movie desperately needed. This version also includes a bunch of new narration by Van Stratten that helps cover the lost Tamiroff scenes. While I dislike CONFIDENTIAL REPORT for these structural changes, I do acknowledge that it was the work of competent hands that were at least making a good faith effort in carrying out the assignment. It was an honest butchery.

The general release U.S. version, on the other hand, has been described as somebody taking the Corinth version and simply lopping off everything that would make it non-chronological, complete with shoddy side effects like truncated narration. It's so disreputable, in fact, that I extend Dolivet the courtesy of doubting if he even knew about it. If it surfaced in the sixties, that would seem well past the time that Dolivet would have been retooling the movie to secure distribution deals. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever had the U.S. rights - or imagined that they did - mutilated the movie of their own volition.

Officially, M&A Alexander obtained the U.S. distribution rights in 1959, for a ten year period. Per Thomas's research, they failed to put the movie out theatrically, and aired it on television in 1961. It was around then that Bogdanovich made his discovery of the Corinth. Bogdanovich's lobbying led to the arrangement with Dan Talbot to show the movie at The New Yorker specifically. Presumably though, M&A still possessed ARKADIN's underlying U.S. rights for the duration of that ten year period, after which it became available for Corinth to scoop up. So unless the purely linear version was truly a bootleg (which it certainly comes off as in quality regardless of origin), my best guess is that M&A did the mutilating themselves.

The other possibility is that M&A was sent that version. Bogdanovich remembered that M&A had at least two versions, with "one longer than the other." Naturally he asked to see the longer one, which is what we know as the Corinth. In theory, the linear cut could have been the other one M&A received. As to why it existed in the first place, maybe it was prepared by Filmorsa as some extreme alternative they never ultimately had to resort to, but then it got sent to M&A by accident, as indeed the Corinth version itself apparently was.

And what of this 1961 broadcast that predates even The New Yorker premiere? Was it even the Corinth version? Supposing M&A had both the linear cut and the Corinth cut in their vaults, did the former become "the television version"? Between Filmorsa evidently not sending over the prints they intended to, and the fact that M&A "didn't know what they had" (as Bogdanovich puts it in the Comprehensive Version featurette), there was all kinds of potential for confusion and inadvertence.

[Le Chiffre]

That's a very intriguing possibility, since CONFIDENTIAL REPORT is, as you said, more linear than the Corinth, which was thought to have been completed by Welles around December 1954. Could the linear version have been created from that shortly afterwards as a kind of rough draft experiment to see what would be involved in making a more linear version, which CR eventually turned out to be?

Although it would seem the linear version has been put out to pasture by the Criterion set, it's sometimes selling at around $20 now on Amazon and eBay. As it's unlikely that that version will ever receive another video release, those cheap DVDs may become collector's items some day. Unlikely, but who knows? For reasons you cited, the Criterion set will definitely be a collector's item, although it is good to have the whole thing on the Criterion Channel. The linear version does actually have one shot that's not in any other version: a commercial airliner transporting Van Stratton back to Europe from Mexico. I wonder who did that?

Speaking of the graveyard story, Thomas indulges in some dubious speculation about that scene in his essay, suggesting that it may have been reinstated by Dolivet as some sort of coded statement to his slippery friend.

I love that. I can hear Dolivet to Welles now: "That scene is you and me, buddy." As Thomas puts it:

Orson Welles
1943 - 1955

***

Back to Arden: The only other film besides Arkadin that I'd ever seen him in was his brief but great death scene cameo in OMEN III, but he did have at least one other leading role, in a British B-noir from 1957 called THE DEPRAVED, now on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNvVVcIdwz0&t=573s

[JasonH]

I wasn't aware that anyone had been able to date the Corinth version. December 1954 does seem credible enough. January 1955 is when Welles stepped away from the editing room (not barred, though it was voluntary in an armistice kind of way), with the arrangement being that he would leave Renzo Lucidi to physically edit alone while working with him long distance. Then when Lucidi was finished, Welles would come in for the final polish. That was the plan, but Thomas reports that the director failed to return to the editing room when given the opportunity.

Here is Welles in a January 1955 broadcast telling the BBC that ARKADIN is "finished." I wouldn't expect him to be candidly talking about the behind the scenes friction in such a context, but it's a remarkable statement unto itself, considering that Lucidi's editing work continued for months afterward, concluding in April 1955. July is when Welles and Dolivet had their blow-out, friendship-ending fight, but it's framed as having to do with money and failure to meet contract obligations (some of it having to do with unrelated projects) rather than creative battles over this movie.

In August, finally, came the London premiere, by which time the movie was called CONFIDENTIAL REPORT -- though not the cut we know by that name. Thomas is of the opinion that if this premiere version of the movie had survived, it would be the most ideal version (though of course still not a director's cut, with Welles in fact dismissing it as a "selling copy" and declining to attend to avoid Dolivet) because it pre-dated the structural overhaul but would have bore whatever refinement was accomplished since the Corinth. It is also the version that late Wellesnet member Glenn Anders testifies to having seen. The version we know as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT is a re-edit that was finished February 1956 and first released that April.

What's most perplexing about this timeline to me is how different the Corinth and CONFIDENTIAL REPORT (the one we're left with) are not. We're supposed to believe that a good four months further editing work occurred after the Corinth, but to do what, exactly? Beyond the obvious changes in sequencing - which happened post-Ludici - the versions are pretty much the same in terms of editing within scenes. You do have a few extensions to go along with the lost Tamiroff scenes, and there are a bunch of different line reads, but in isolation, the shared scenes are cut together virtually the same way. It's odd that the Corinth should have its origins so much further back in the timeline, because the degree to which it feels unfinished isn't really improved upon by CONFIDENTIAL REPORT despite the position Thomas seems to take, but that's a whole other post.

[tonyw]

Arden would appear in virtually most TV episodes in the UK during the 50s. Orson made the correct choice with the Richard Nixon associations that Robert Ayyes and ex-golfer Scot High McDermott who specialized in Yank roles in film and TV never had.

[Le Chiffre]

I've heard of Arden's Van Stratton being compared to both Nixon and Fred MacMurray! Of course that would be scoundrel Fred, before THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR and MY THREE SONS.

Here is Welles in a January 1955 broadcast telling the BBC that ARKADIN is "finished."

Good program. Welles not only says the film is finished, but says it is "going to be released very soon." But then, they couldn't release anything without a satisfied distributor.

In August, finally, came the London premiere... the version that late Wellesnet member Glenn Anders testifies to having seen.

In his posts, Glenn seems to say that he saw a kind of sneak preview of the film at around the time he saw MOBY DICK REHEARSED, which would have been June or July of 1955. He does mention the August '55 release version, which he says was different from the version he saw, also called CONFIDENTIAL REPORT. If his 50-year-old memories were accurate, the scene of Zouk being let out of jail may have been Welles' last bid to do something special for his good friend, to partially replace all the eliminated scenes between Zouk and Van Stratton, which may have been not liked by potential distributors.

Officially, M&A Alexander obtained the U.S. distribution rights in 1959, for a ten year period. Per Thomas's research, they failed to put the movie out theatrically, and aired it on television in 1961...Presumably though, M&A still possessed ARKADIN's underlying U.S. rights for the duration of that ten year period, after which it became available for Corinth to scoop up. So unless the purely linear version was truly a bootleg (which it certainly comes off as in quality regardless of origin), my best guess is that M&A did the mutilating themselves.

Here's a little discovery that if true might bolster that idea a bit: RAICES EN EL FANGO (Roots in the Mud) was the South American title, and it was released in Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, maybe several other countries. This Uruguay page lists it at 93 minutes, so maybe the linear version did get some kind of theatrical release after all, at least in South America.

Assuming this version was dubbed into Spanish, there would be much less need to worry about the crude truncation of scenes (and crude truncation of narration) if it was indeed the linear version. It would probably only be in English that that crudeness would be noticeable. If that is the case, then one might speculate that the linear version was never meant to be seen in English.

[JasonH]

Fascinating that Glenn may have seen yet another variant; there’s truly no bottom here. Thomas describes the August 1955 debut as a two-week engagement in London. A general release version was shown in November which Thomas says was “probably slightly revised.” Only after that did Warner Bros. request the big re-edit for international release. Any version seen in England in 1955 should have been broadly true to the back-and-forth structure we know from the Corinth, complete with the garret scenes…in theory.

A bit of context that legitimizes the Corinth for me is that the Spanish version was “virtually completed by August [1954]”. (The original idea seems to have been to rush the Spanish version out the door in a “good enough” form, a plan which Welles was apparently on board with.) Per Thomas, it ultimately wasn’t released until October 1955 for whatever reason, but regardless of delays in distribution it seems that it was indeed edited in haste with the intention of it being the vanguard. In fact, the footage of Suzanne Flon and Katina Paxinou for the English-speaking version wasn’t shot until September 1954, well after principal photography had wrapped.

If the Spanish version was more or less finalized in August 1954, how far from the goal can the Corinth, which we’re placing in December, really be? Why was Welles willing to call the movie finished only a month later, and what then required Lucidi to keep working away until April? And if it took that long, it sure doesn’t seem that Dolivet gained much in the way of speed by asking Welles to step aside.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that despite the Corinth being work-in-progress, the fact that it was scored and had printed titles would seem to confer it a status somewhat above a rough cut. Perhaps it too was a “selling copy” for sending to potential distributors. In this light, it’s perfectly logical that M&A Alexander would have received it, with the only question being why would they have received something so outdated when by then (1959) Filmorsa could have shipped what was by their reckoning the final cut. Maybe it was as simple as re-using an old candidate version out of laziness, indifference, or accident. By then the project’s financial story was pretty much told, and indeed the sale to M&A for the U.S. rights is described as being for a “small sum” – Filmorsa was just taking what they could get at that point. And the fact that M&A itself couldn’t manage to get the movie shown theatrically indicates that they were probably right not to hold out any further.