Orson Welles’s “Mr. Arkadin” tells the story of an elusive billionaire who hires an American smuggler to investigate his past. Welles missed the editing deadline, so the producer handed over the editing to others. Following two Spanish-dubbed versions, released in Madrid in March 1955, the first English-language version was released in London in August 1955 as “Confidential Report” but was never released in the US. The fourth version, called “the Corinth version”, was discovered in 1961 and was released in the US in 1962. Finally, in 2006, “the Criterion edit” was released; likely to remain the one closest to Welles’ intentions.
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Mathias Gold (Kevin Kline) is a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who inherits a Parisian apartment from his estranged father. But when he arrives in France to sell the vast domicile, he’s shocked to discover a live-in tenant who is not prepared to budge. His apartment is a viager – an ancient French real estate system with complex rules pertaining to its resale – and the feisty Englishwoman Mathilde Girard (Maggie Smith), who has lived in the apartment with her daughter Chloé (Kristin Scott Thomas) for many years, can by contract collect monthly payments from Mathias until her death.
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