Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:44 pm
Last saturday night, Italian TV channel Rai Tre had an unique and extremely unusual all night long presentation dedicated to "Mr.Arkadin". It was the part of "Fuori Orario" show, which in the past had featured various Welles films and rarities (for example, they broadcasted "In the land of Don Quixote" five months ago). In this presentation, they tried to include almost every available variation or different version for most of the scenes of the film. I don't think that anybody attempted to do something similar on TV.
I recorded the whole show, and haven't yet found time to watch everything properly, so here are some brief impressions from what I've seen so far.
The length of the whole Arkadin showing was five hours in total, with 15 minutes of introduction in studio. One participant was Ciro Giorgini, the author of "Rosabella" documentary, who did lot of research on Arkadin during last 20 years. Then they showed some examples of "scorpion and frog" story from various other films.
Finally, the film was presented in the way that most of sequences were consecutively repeated from different versions (Confidential Report, Corinth, Spanish version), and mixed with the various outtakes and rushes from the Luxembourg Cinematheque. Some of the unedited rushes without soundtrack were subtitled with dialogue from the original script. Also, some excerpts from Arkadin novel and radio show "Greek Meets Greek" were used in the beginning of the presentation (and possibly later too).
It is quite fascinating and unusual presentation, that borders with experimental cinema. They indeed managed to expand the film this way to gargantuan 280 minutes. The result is odd, perhaps not extremely enjoyable, but neverthenless unique and original. I'll post more info once I see the complete program.
I recorded the whole show, and haven't yet found time to watch everything properly, so here are some brief impressions from what I've seen so far.
The length of the whole Arkadin showing was five hours in total, with 15 minutes of introduction in studio. One participant was Ciro Giorgini, the author of "Rosabella" documentary, who did lot of research on Arkadin during last 20 years. Then they showed some examples of "scorpion and frog" story from various other films.
Finally, the film was presented in the way that most of sequences were consecutively repeated from different versions (Confidential Report, Corinth, Spanish version), and mixed with the various outtakes and rushes from the Luxembourg Cinematheque. Some of the unedited rushes without soundtrack were subtitled with dialogue from the original script. Also, some excerpts from Arkadin novel and radio show "Greek Meets Greek" were used in the beginning of the presentation (and possibly later too).
It is quite fascinating and unusual presentation, that borders with experimental cinema. They indeed managed to expand the film this way to gargantuan 280 minutes. The result is odd, perhaps not extremely enjoyable, but neverthenless unique and original. I'll post more info once I see the complete program.