History Film / MrArkadin

* SweaterGirl: Milly is really stress-testing a sweater in the scene where she confronts Arkadin about his Nazi-friendly past.

* MasqueradeBall: Stratten infiltrates one in Arkadin's castle in Spain, where all the guests are wearing sinister masks patterned off the work of Goya's paintings.

The plot of the film concerns Guy van Stratten (Peter van Eyck), a shady American black market dealer and smuggler who operates in Post-World War II Europe, in various run down docks and back alleys. One night he comes across an informant who in his dying words gives him the name "Gregory Arkadin", a Georgian arms-dealer and business magnate. Believing that Arkadin could be the key to a score of a lifetime, he chases after and infiltrates his house in Spain, while also chatting up with his daughter Raina (Paola Mori). Eventually Arkadin finds Stratten and offers him a mission. Arkadin has no memory of his past before 1927, and has forgotten all about it. He tasks Stratten with investigating his past. So Stratten pieces together clues and tracks down many of Arkadin's old associates who claim to know the man before he hit it big. Arkadin meets a series of shady characters (played by character actors like Creator/MichaelRedgrave, Katrina Paxinou, Welles regular Creator/AkimTamiroff), but a series of mysterious deaths and assassination follows his path.

* EvilParentsWantGoodKids [[spoiler:Mr. Arkadin loved his daughter Raina more than anything. His entire plan is to wipe out his past so that his daughter would never know the kind of man he used to be. When Stratten tells her, and he learns that she found out, Arkadin commits suicide by crashing his plane out of shame]].

The plot of the film concerns Guy van Stratten (Peter van Eyck), a shady American black market dealer and smuggler who operates in Post-World War II Europe, in various run down docks and back alleys. One night he comes across an informant who in his dying words gives him the name "Gregory Arkadin", a Georgian arms-dealer and business magnate. Believing that Arkadin could be the key to a score of a lifetime, he chases after and infiltrates his house in Spain, while also chatting up with his daughter Raina (Paola Mori). Eventually Arkadin finds Stratten and offers him a mission. Arkadin has no memory of his past before 1927, and has forgotten all about it. He tasks Stratten with investigating his past. So Stratten pieces together clues and tracks down many of Arkadin's old associates who claim to know the man before he hit it big. Arkadin meets a series of shady characters (played by character actors like Creator/MichaelRedgrave, Katrina Paxinou, Welles regular Akim Tamiroff), but a series of mysterious deaths and assassination follows his path.

The film is best known as the TropeCodifier for the famous parable of "The Scorpion and the Frog" later popularized by ''Film/TheCryingGame''.

* TragicVillain: [[spoiler:Arkadin is an evil ruthless man whose hands are stained with the blood of countless people, but he does it all in the hope that eventually his daughter would have a better life and that by wiping out his past, it will go away. His actions to do so ends up making her find out anyway]].

** ''The Third Man'', it originated as a spinoff to it, and Guy van Stratten is a younger Harry Lime, and the denouement, where [[spoiler:Van Stratten tries to get the girl he likes to betray and abandon the bad guy despite her personal feelings, and ends up being rejected for how he used her, mirrors the finale of ''The Third Man'', with Guy van Stratten being the Holly Martins]].

''Mr. Arkadin'' is a 1955 film written and directed by Creator/OrsonWelles, who also played the title role.

* ThePurge: [[spoiler:Arkadin's plan with Guy van Stratten, send him around to dig up his past, which it turns out he knows and remembers perfectly well. Find out all his old friends, track them, and kill them one by one, and finish it by killing Guy and whoever else involved. He murders Milly, Stratten's stripper girlfriend, and Stratten upon cottoning on his plans protects himself by trying to turn Arkadin's beloved daughter against him]].

The film began as a story that Welles had written for ''Radio/TheLivesOfHarryLime'', a spin-off radio serial inspired by the success of ''Film/TheThirdMan'' by Carol Reed. Welles shot the film and funded it in Europe and made the film piecemeal. Unfortunately the producer Louis Dolivet, himself a shady figure in real life[[note]]He apparently fenced some of the gold reserves given by the Spanish Republic to UsefulNotes/JosefStalin as a quid pro quo for USSR support for the Republicans[[/note]] fell out with Welles and took the footage away from him. The film was released in a variety of cuts internationally, with its English language release being "Confidential Report". Welles dismissed all these versions. Creator/TheCriterionCollection subsequently combined the multiple versions of the films in a single package, offering the original release, the "Corinth" version (which has more Welles footage), and the Comprehensive Version, which is a new cut that combines elements from multiple versions made for the Criterion release.

* HitlerCam: Orson Welles loved this trope, and it's found here in the opening FramingDevice scene in which Van Stratten looms over a seated Zouk before starting his story.

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Welles noted that Mr. Arkadin was inspired by a number of real-life arms dealers, including Basil Zaharoff. However he also noted that he saw Arkadin as a stand-in for UsefulNotes/JosefStalin, both being Georgians who changed their names, and who sent out agents to track down his old friends [[spoiler:so as to purge them and then complete it by killing his original agent, much as Stalin did to his friends and the NKVD chiefs Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov who helped him do the purging]].

!! Tropes

* HumbleGoal: All Jakob Zouk wants--and all he was dreaming of in his years in prison--was a dish of goose liver with apples and onions. [[spoiler:He gets killed before he can have it.]]
* ThatManIsDead: [[spoiler:Gregory Arkadin wants to wipe out all traces and memory of Wasaw Athabadze, aka his real name and identity, by tracking down and killing all who still knew that man]].

* EvilParentsWantGoodKids [[spoiler:Mr. Arkadin loved his daughter Raina more than anything. His entire plan is to wipe out his past so that his daughter would never know the kind of man he used to be. When Stratten tells her, and he learns that she found out, Arkadin commits suicide by crashing his plane out of shame]].
* {{Expy}}: Since it originated as a spin-off of ''The Third Man'', one can easily see that Guy van Stratten is one for Harry Lime, albeit one who is a little younger, and not yet totally amoral (but getting there). In fact given his shady background, it's possible that "Van Stratten" is an alias, that he really is Lime, although for copyright reasons Welles couldn't admit that.

* NoHistoricalFiguresWereHarmed: Welles noted that Mr. Arkadin was inspired by a number of real-life arms dealers, including Basil Zaharoff. However he also noted that he saw Arkadin as a stand-in for UsefulNotes/JosefStalin, both being Georgians who changed their names, and who sent out agents to track down his old friends [[spoiler:so as to purge them and then complete it by killing his original agent, much as Stalin did to his friends and the NKVD chiefs Genrikh Yagoda and Nikolai Yezhov who helped him do the purging]].

[[caption-width-right:348:"Let's drink to character"]]

-> A certain great and powerful king once asked a poet "What can I give you of all that I have?" / He wisely replied "Anything sir... except your secret."
-->-- Title Card

The film began as a story that Welles had written for "The Lives of Harry Lime", a spin-off radio serial inspired by the success of ''Film/TheThirdMan'' by Carol Reed. Welles shot the film and funded it in Europe and made the film piecemeal. Unfortunately the producer Louis Dolivet, himself a shady figure in real life[[note]]He apparently fenced some of the gold reserves given by the Spanish Republic to UsefulNotes/JosefStalin as a quid pro quo for USSR support for the Republicans[[/note]] fell out with Welles and took the footage away from him. The film was released in a variety of cuts internationally, with its English language release being "Confidential Report". Welles dismissed all these versions. Creator/TheCriterionCollection subsequently combined the multiple versions of the films in a single package, offering the original release, the "Corinth" version (which has more Welles footage), and the Comprehensive Version, which is a new cut that combines elements from multiple versions made for the Criterion release.

* TheHoneyTrap: Milly, is sent by Guy to hustle up Gregory, who of course sees this coming, and it's implied that [[spoiler:he had his way with her anyway, either by rape or otherwise, before getting her drunk and tossing her off her yacht, where her body lands naked on the beach]].

The plot of the film concerns Guy van Stratten (Peter van Eyck), a shady American black market dealer and smuggler who operates in Europe, in various run down docks and back alleys. One night he comes across an informant who in his dying words gives him the name "Grigori Arkadin", a Georgian arms-dealer and business magnate. Believing that Arkadin could be the key to a score of a lifetime, he chases after and infiltrates his house in Spain, while also chatting up with his daughter Raina (Paola Mori). Eventually Arkadin finds Stratten and offers him a mission. Arkadin has no memory of his past before 1927, and has forgotten all about it. He tasks Stratten with investigating his past. So Stratten pieces together clues and tracks down many of Arkadin's old associates who claim to know the man before he hit it big. Arkadin meets a series of shady characters (played by characters like Michael Redgrave, Katrina Paxinou, Welles regular Akim Tamiroff), but a series of mysterious deaths and assassination follows his path.

The film began as a story that Welles had written for "The Lives of Harry Lime", a spin-off radio serial inspired by the success of ''Film/TheThidMan'' by Carol Reed. Welles shot the film and funded it in Europe and made the film piecemeal. Unfortunately the producer Louis Dolivet, himself a shady figure in real life[[note]]He apparently fenced some of the gold reserves given by the Spanish Republic to UsefulNotes/JosefStalin as a quid pro quo for USSR support for the Republicans[[/note]] fell out with Welles and took the footage away from him. The film was released in a variety of cuts internationally, with its English language release being "Confidential Report". Welles dismissed all these versions. Creator/TheCriterionCollection subsequently combined the multiple versions of the films in a single package, offering the original release, the "Corinth" version (which has more Welles footage), and the Comprehensive Version, which is a new cut that combines elements from multiple versions made for the Criterion release.