There’s something to be said for filming everything at weird angles and heightening your entire movie at once and having arrogant cheesehead lead characters… casting yourself as a rich & powerful murderer and casting your wife as your daughter… using flashbacks and narration and tossing in some goofy comedy scenes. The movie kept me guessing, stylistically if not story-wise.
Stars a bunch of non-stars, like Robert Arden and Paola Mori. Akim Tamiroff, the reluctant old guy in the beat-up apartment in the only non-flashback scenes, was in The Trial, Touch of Evil, some Preston Sturges movies, Ocean’s Eleven and Alphaville.
Arden, with the high-class name of Guy Van Stratten, is the cheesehead who starts chasing after Arkadin’s daughter Raina. Arkadin hires Guy to dig up Arkadin’s own past, then follows, killing people Guy meets with. Arkadin is thwarted at the airport after tying up the last loose end (Akim Tamiroff) then leaps from his private plane when he believes that Guy has told the daughter all that’s happened.
Liked the movie but it’s not like “let’s have some friends over and watch mr. arkadin”. This was the corinth version… gotta check out the others sometime.
