Directed by Orson Welles • 1955 • United States

Orson Welles’s MR. ARKADIN (a.k.a. CONFIDENTIAL REPORT) tells the story of an elusive billionaire who hires an American smuggler to investigate his past, leading to a dizzying descent into a cold-war European landscape. The film’s history is also marked by this vertigo. There are at least eight MR. ARKADINs: three radio plays, a novel, several long-lost cuts, and the controversial European release known as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT. Criterion gathered all of these elements to create this landmark release—at last unraveling one of cinema’s great mysteries.