F for Fake

"F for fake" stands for the last movie Orson Welles really directed and, as for many artistic legacies it's the final demonstration of the genius of the artist, becoming some kind of briefing of his entire career.

It's hard to explain this movie and why I really enjoyed because, as many other Welles's movies, it's full of surprises and twists.

Filmed as a Documentary, this film introduces us the personae of Elmyr, a painter who lives out of painting copies of famous pictures of Van Gogh, Picasso, Vlaminck and many others and making them look like they're the original one. Welles also introduces to us two more people; an actress and a biographer.

With many resemblances to Welles's own life, the director of such wonderful pieces as "Citizen Kane" and "Touch of Evil" plays with the audience some sort of magical trickery. What is real and what is not? If Elmyr is able to paint a perfect copy of a famous picture and fool the world greatest experts, is he as good artist as the originals he's copying?

Working as a perfect metaphore of Welles own experiences in art (he's not only been movie director but radio speaker and even painter) "F for Fake" remains as a perfect legacy of the ideas of one of the greatest and most gifted cinema artists. Don't miss it!

There is so much zest, wit, fun, cheek, energy in this supremely entertaining film, that it's a crime that Orson Welles never directed another one. It's packed with as many ideas and potential future directions as CITIZEN KANE, but bizarrely hasn't received an nth of that classic's acclaim. Indeed only Godard's later documentaries seem to be at all influenced by this delightful fancy.

The film dazzles on so many levels. As a story about five interesting characters - two art forgers, a charlatan biographer, Howard Hughes (famous recluse, and disseminator of misleading information and doubles), and the great Orsino himself, myth-maker and magician. Their stories, fascinating in themselves, mingle, juxtapose and clash, to provide a complex essay on the nature of art, the links between illusion, life, forgery and artifice.

Elmyr is a master forger whose 'works' appear in many galleries. His story makes us ask: what is art? What is it about art that moves us - the thing itself, or its perceived value? In an age of mechanical reproduction, can authenticity survive, is it a viable (or even desirable) option? Does any of this actually matter? Maybe because everything in a post-modern culture is reproduced, the aura of the original work of art (pace Benjamin) becomes even more powerful. Or maybe a proliferation of fakes, doubles, illusions asks us to profoundly question received truths, official versions, 'authorities', who would make us believe in repressive wholes and canons, stories that tell one experience, and deny many others. Art itself is a forgery, of nature or the imagination - the forger is little different from an interpreter (e.g. Welles and Shakespeare): he cannot help stamping his own personality on the work.

These questions are very complex, and cannot be grasped in one viewing. The film's form is bewildering and exhilirating. Welles promises us, in this tale of fakery, truth for an hour, but this is a truth we must make out for ourselves. Breathless narration; visual puns; the weaving of documentary footage, stills, reconstructions, other films; tireless, confusing editing; rapid subject changes; all manage to disrupt and complicate an essentially straightforward story.

Welles the narrator is an absolute delight, a jovial trickster, with his gorgeous hearty laugh, games, aphorisms, comments, allusions; and yet behind it all is an extraordinarily depressing account of his own career, the perception of failure and broken promises, and the onset of mortality.

The last 20 minutes is an extraordinary coup de cinema, as well as a masterpiece of storytelling. The Legrand music is playful and energetic, before finally slowing down for a very melancholy climax. This film is a remarkable one-off: frustrating, irritating, stimulating, astonishing, hilarious. It always pulls the rug from under your feet, and you gleefully await your next tumble. Only Bunuel began and ended his career with the same passion and genius, the same desire to demand the most from his audiences, refusing to rest on his considerable laurels. Absolutely wonderful.

Orson Welles completely changed the face of film with "Citizen Kane." It was precisely right to spawn the revolution in narrative layering. For those who don't know, the Kane experiment was initiated not by Welles but Mankiewicz. But it was Welles who expanded and pulled off the success of managing so many types of narrative layers. (The number and type would be later exceeded by "Annie Hall," but no one would consider it a triggering idea by then.) I don't think Kane was his best film, but it certainly was his most influential, and as such it haunted him all his life. Especially haunting were all the types of layers he discovered after Kane. As he only had that one shot at greatness, it would have been great if he could go back and remake it, adding the new ideas. This project is the next best thing. But to see its beauty, you have to know two things: first that the layers that Kane is missing and that many filmmakers used since is the notion of annotative narrative layers. Second, you should know that several of his "lost" projects exploit just this notion, especially "Other Side of the Wind." Here's the setup in this fake documentary about fakery: You have the layer of Kane, which is based on Hearst. (A story about a storyman.) Now Welles adds the (completely bogus) layer that Kane was to be originally about Howard Hughes, a more intrinsically layered character. (This remark, incidentally, is what triggered Scorcese's interest.) Then to Welles' bogus movie about Hughes' life (itself a bogus notion) he adds another layer: Irving's bogus story about Hughes' life. But he doesn't stop there. Indeed, he goes further into another layer: an Irving story (presumably _not_ bogus) about an artist (Elmyr) who produced bogus artworks, including bogus Picassos. The first two thirds of the project are concerned with getting all these plates spinning at the same time. Some very clever editing is used to merge the layers, even though nearly all the camera-work is mundane. The final third takes all these and weaves another layer that intersperses. It begins with the image of a lovely woman to whom he introduced us in the very beginning. It was a seemingly inexplicable introduction: candid shots of men on the street ogling her vampish walk. This woman is Oja Kodar (aka Olga Palinkas), Welles' lover, companion and screen writing collaborator on all his folded projects — all lost except this one. Around this woman, Welles conflates every layer you have seen before into a story about her seducing Picasso into painting 22 pictures of her, presumably nude, of which he makes her a gift. She subsequently sells Picassos which turn out to have been produced by her grandfather, Elmyr who we saw earlier. In the earlier shots, we actually see him produce bogus paintings which are then burned. But in Welles' confabulation, the originals are burned and the fakes sold. (You should know that in the lore of folded narrative (which goes through cabala to Finnigans Wake), there are exactly 22 folds you can make and no more.) Things are tied together with Orson admitting to being a fake, and the story a fake, but perhaps necessary in the name of art? No one should see "Citizen Kane" without also seeing this annotation. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Orson Welles's final completed movie deals with fakery, and in particular with two of the most notorious forgers of the twentieth century. "F is for Fakes" (also called "F for Fake") is not really a movie or documentary as much as a look at how we interpret art, and what we WANT to interpret about anything that is essentially fake. Welles proudly calls himself a charlatan while performing magic tricks and coming up with all sorts of ways to play with the audience. I personally had never heard of Elmyr de Hory until watching this, but Welles turns him into a very interesting person.

All in all, the director known as a boy genius had a fine end to his career. Welles created a truly mind-bending look at the concept of art. The fact that the movie came out around the time that Clifford Irving's scandal broke (he wrote a forged biography of Howard Hughes) certainly adds to the documentary's quality. Can there truly be any more definite reality left in the world?

Of the Orson Welles films I have seen, this has to be the most fun to watch. "F for Fake" is about an art forgerer and his biographer who was a forgerer himself. (He faked a biography about Howard Hughes.) What's great about the film is that Welles constantly keeps you guessing at what's real and what's fake and why at all that might be important. I also give Welles credit for pulling the greatest plot twist I have ever not seen coming. And this is a documentary! There's not supposed to be a plot, is there? (wink, wink) Giving the surprise away would ruin all of the fun. What I can say is that you should find this somewhat rare film and watch it with a clock close by.