[The world’s second richest man may be buying yet another storied Hollywood studio so I’ve been working through the Warners catalog, particularly their Janus/Criterion collection in case I need to cut ties with another streaming service. I thought I’d jot down some impressions along the way. — MP 10/8/25]
Clearly a low-budget effort with a couple of notable character actors however no title stars aside from Welles himself. In what I assume was an effort to economize, Welles apparently employed solely cameramen below 4 ft tall, which explains why a lot of the inside scenes that aren’t full-face close-ups had been filmed from waist top.
Usually, the path feels virtually like a parody of Orson Welles, with dutched cameras, scenes shot by means of latticework, expressionistic shadows solid on the partitions, and so forth. A up to date evaluate of Dumbo mentioned that it had extra digicam angles than Citizen Kane. Mr. Arkadin has extra digicam angles than Dumbo.
The primary downside with the film isn’t the price range; it’s the script. Just about everybody agrees Welles truly wrote this one, and his limitations undoubtedly present by means of. That’s to not say there isn’t an excessive amount of great things right here — scenes, bits of dialogue, concepts that might have been first-rate had he labored with a collaborator who was sharp sufficient to see what was value saving and robust sufficient to not be pushed round.
The result’s completely important for a real Orson Welles fan, a pointy go for most people, and someplace within the center for the remainder of us.
