F for Fake

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.

F for Fake (1973)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Orson Welles' final major picture started off as a documentary on art forger Elmyr de Hory but when that project led to an interview with Clifford Irving, the man who wrote the fake Howard Hughes biography, the documentary took a new turn and decided to look at fakes all around. This really isn't your typical documentary and many critics of the film will say it makes very little sense and all in all is nothing more than an incoherent mess. I wouldn't go that far but I think F FOR FAKE is certainly more style than actual substance. I say that because Welles visual style here is something that you didn't see in documentaries at the time and I'd say that nothing that followed really looked the same. The documentary has an avant garde feel to it and most of them comes from the editing. The editing goes all over the place with all sorts of weird edits, different styles of cameras being used and the editing usually takes the story and tells it in a different time frame and I think this is where people get lost. The look of the film is certainly something impressive and you really can turn the volume down and be entertained just by the look that Welles made. However, this "style" is so good that it really takes away from the stories being told and I think it really kills most of the interest in the subjects. I think the way the story goes back and forth does make the film incoherent but this is also due to the fact that the material just isn't worth following. I think had Welles made a more traditional documentary then the story would have been more entertaining. As is, the story just gets lost in the style and in the end you really don't learn anything about either man. We even get a quick clip about The War of the World hoax that landed Welles not in jail but in Hollywood. What actually keeps the film entertaining is the performance of Welles being himself and hosting. He comes off so good and charming that it at least keeps you awake even when the story itself goes under. F FOR FAKE is considered by some to be horrid while others see it as another Welles masterpiece. I'm in the middle thinking it shows some signs of greatness but in the end it's just too rough around the edges to really work.

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.

F is for Fake (1973)

Like many, I'm an Orson Welles fan. Not just his films (the best of them are among the best ever made) but also the man, for his rebellious side and his persistence. And his flaws, undermining his own best purposes.

But this movie struck me as affected, overly long, baroquely complicated, and finally just off-putting. Yes, it's incredibly well edited, and for that, if that's your thing, you should see it. But to me editing is part of something larger, and this larger thing is troubled.

I saw no reason to really care about the subjects here. The deliberate confusions (borne from the editing, in part) are half art and half avoidance, in a way. The documentary truth about the subjects, the supposed subjects, a French painter of forgeries and a writer about Howard Hughes and a forged check, is not really the goal. Nor is it possible. So what we have instead is the ride, the process of talking about these various man and their rich compatriots from all kinds of colorful places.

There is a limited range of footage at use here, most of it home-style 8mm color stock of the two or three main participants (call them suspects, call them actors, call them fakes) which was shot by a different filmmaker and turned over to Welles. This is interspersed with high quality footage of the narrator, Mr. Welles, in his deep voice and characteristic hat. And there is a little additional footage, including the dubiously connected opening scenes where Welles's own young attractive partner parades in a mini-skirt on a public street, only later to comment that such an act came out of her "feminism."

Okay. Maybe this is all part of the lie that gets incorporated as the truth. When you play games with truth and lies some interesting conflicts are intended. But for me, this beginning and the long end where a fictional series of paintings has been made by Picasso (not actually) of this same Welles companion (whose name is Oja Kodar) is pure voyeurism on the part of the director. Why he wanted to share his woman publicly I couldn't say (but can guess), but in fact the filming at these points takes on a very different sensibility.

In style, the rest of the movie strikes me as stunted, though endlessly interesting because of its constant cutting and jumping from one scene and format to another. In content it all seemed circuitous for effect without the necessary thrill of caring. The result avoids clichés beautifully, which is good (in fact, what the film has most of all, in a Welles way, is originality). But it also ends up being at times more style than effect. That is, the effects, which are so evident, are superficial.

Which leaves very little. Without a compelling subject and a convincing formal presentation, what is there?

So what about the huge reputation this movie has? Let's assume it's more than just Welles worship. I think for one it has anticipated the growing public interest in art forgery. It also creates a fascinating zone where a documentary isn't about establishing the truth, and so is a kind of third category--the fiction film using found footage. (To some extent this is the core of it--Welles has used existing footage and led our reading of it to create his own subjective "truth" of it.) There are aspects here all over the place. Aspects and aspects of aspects. For this, there is a formal invention that might have been enough when I was younger. Now, for whatever reason, it feels self-indulgent and, like the first scene in the movie, pure deception.

Maybe that's the point.

The magnificent Orson takes us on a whimsical tour of fakery that involves some real fakery, some fake fakery, some fake reality, and... You get the idea.

The point seems to be that all of life is an illusion. The question becomes how much illusion can we buy and how much becomes offensive. We see what we want to see. We ignore the rest.

Orson is in classic form here, reciting poetry with dramatic flare, theatrically roaming about Europe in a wide-brimmed black hat, black cape, and surrounded by a clowd of cigar smoke. Do we get an insight into the real Orson? Is there a real Orson? Is there any point asking?

Orson tilts his head at a humorous angle and looks at us out of the corner of his eyes -- and we are his willing victims in a delightful hoax. Or is it real?