The Third Man and Citizen Kane

First, i won't say Mr. Arkadin is a rip-off or anything like that. It is really original, but some elements of it reminded me of other movies of which Welles was a part of.

First is Carol Reed's The Third Man (one of my favorite movies of all time). The most evident common point in Arkadin is the Joseph Cotten-like Robert Arden, roaming around, interviewing weird people, to get into the past of one character he can't get the information from for various reasons (he either thinks that he's dead or that he dosen't remember anything). In both movies, the "excuse" is a fake put on by the Orson Welles character. The main point is the research.
There is one particular image, in the beginning of Arkadin, that was straight out of The Third Man. You see a man running only by the shadow he projects on a wall, exactly the same way as when Harry Lime escaped from his friend the first time he saw him alive in Vienna.

Citizen Kane is obvious. The serie of flash-back that makes you discover a man's life, the billionaire, etc.

"You're not a real actor in this business until you've played a bitch. Or a psychopath killer."