Opinión de yakikorosu

Even the inherent beauty of an Orson Welles film and an interesting story can't overcome bad editing, terrible pacing, sub par acting and an awful dub. The problems start early on when you notice that, what do you know, the dialogue just doesn't really match the lip movements. They're always a bit ahead or a bit behind or just plain off. This is no mere technical gripe--the constant distraction ruined any chance of immersiveness that's so important to Welles' visual style, constantly reminding me that this is "just a movie." A further problem, which is kind of hard to explain in text, is that the lines are not read like dialogue for a movie. Instead, they're read just like a radio show--like there's nothing to pay attention to except whatever the characters are saying. This combined with the frenetic editing results in most of the film being an endless barrage of spoken narration and dialogue with nary a break between lines. It sounds like the actors are trying to get through the script as quickly as humanly possible, and thus the nice acting of many characters is lost because it all sounds so staged. Finally, the acting of two of the leads, Robert Arden and Paula Mori (including whoever dubbed her voice), is terrible. Their characters are supposed to provide a lot of the film's emotion, but they have no chemistry or charisma. Orson Welles himself does a nice job, but constantly seems to be overacting because he's matched against such wooden and cloying performances.

The only reason one would watch this, except for being a Welles completist, is for some very beautiful camera-work, but even that is only on display in bursts here and there. And the story, while having a lot of potential, is told in such a haphazard way that it cannot be said to have been realized to any degree. The last quarter of the film in particular includes some actions by both Arkadin and Van Stratten that seem maddeningly incomprehensible, as well as a five-minute-long segment consisting almost entirely of a minor character repeatedly asking for goose liver.

I would recommend watching The Lady From Shanghai instead of this for a film with similar themes that works despite even more pronounced attempts by the studio to butcher Welles' work.