Do you think that when they made “Battlefield Earth,” the DP was actually channeling Orson Welles’ “Mr. Arkadin” when he made every shot a Dutch angle?

“Mr. Arkadin” is Welles coming off being roasted in his last feature noir, “Lady From Shanghai,” for ruining Rita Hayworth’s hair. It’s Welles off a few years of safe haven in Shakespeare adaptions. 

It’s Welles taking the two genres and deciding to use the most uncomfortable aspects of both, and a lot of Dutch (and several other types of) angles to make... whatever “Mr. Arkadin” ended up being. 

The smashing of the most abrasive parts of two distinctly different genres, along with the sad fact that around nine distinctly different final cuts of “Arkadin” exist, makes it a tricky film to reconcile. 

Welles - in full theatrical mode as the mysterious Arkadin himself - seems to relish placing his camera anywhere they would make the viewer utterly uncomfortable. The male characters loom over every frame, the sets are constantly askew — it all contributes to a dizzying and inescapable disorientation. 

It’s unclear how much of this was Welles’ intent and how much comes from the many attempts to resurrect the pieces of a film shattered across decades and continents. In either case; it makes “Arkadin” a technical marvel manipulated into memorably nauseous viewing experience.