Orson Welles had the effrontery to believe that this highly original film on art and the act of creating would be released in the United States. It never was and was only shown on television in the United States and in Europe, and at some film festivals. What a shame because "F For Fake" is one of the director's finest achievements (and by far his last complete effort), a Byzantine rethinking of what a film should be and what it could be. It is also a reconstructive essay on art and the artists who manage to create the art in question in any given media. Welles takes the approach of looking at the media of painting, literature, architecture and films, and this film is a testament and a labor of love to anyone who is involved in the arts.
"F For Fake" begins with Welles arriving at a train station showing a magic coin trick to an awestruck boy. He is interrupted by a passersby (Oja Kodar) who asks him, "Up to your old tricks again?" Welles is then greeted by a film crew led by another director Francois Reichenbach, and tells them that there is a fascinating story involving that passersby. We then realize that this is not really a film and not quite a documentary, so what is it? Well, there is another shot of Welles except this time he is at an editing table looking at shots of Oja Kodar walking on a crowded street surrounded by dozens of onlookers. But who is she? Welles then apologizes for jumping around all over the place, and sets forth in motion a story about the most famous art forger of all time, Elmyr De Hory (who tragically committed suicide after this film was released). He paints fakes so brilliantly that museums often mistake it for the real thing (Modigliani, Picasso, Monet are some of his famous "fakes"). Another story circulates around a notable biographer, Clifford Irving, who has written a bio on De Hory, and has just been accused of writing a fake one on Howard Hughes! He insists he met with Hughes, but who is telling the truth? And is it possible that De Hory is not a faker, but a fake faker?
This may all sound ambiguous and confounding, but one of the pleasures of "F For Fake" is the constant parallels Welles draws between all these interweaving stories. He comes up with theories on the importance of the creator or creators: in one beautifully stylized sequence, we see superimpositions of the many facets of the cathedral Chartres. Astounding architecture (independent film director Stan Brakhage once made a short film about it) but in the end, does it matter who created this wonder of the world? Of course not, probably dozens of skilled artisans and the like and we may never know their names.
Welles draws another parallel with his own life and work (apparently, this film was intended as an attack against film critic Pauline Kael's verbal accusation that Welles shared none of the writing credit for "Citizen Kane"). He gives examples of his famous hoax, "The War of the Worlds" broadcast, and the fact that all his films, indeed all films, are illusions, essentially fakes. So by exemplifying this idea, Welles often shows his film crew filming him as he makes his case before the camera wearing a hat and a cape and performing magic tricks.
"F For Fake" is not an easy film to digest, and it will take more than one viewing since it is not told in a straightforward manner. But the rewards are plenty, and the sight of Welles speaking in his coarse, deep voice is a splendid pleasure already. He keeps us involved and intrigued, and we start to question the validity of the importance of the creator of an artistic masterpiece - of course, it adds to historical lore to know who the artist is, but the work must also speak for itself.
As Welles explains at the beginning, any film is likely to be some sort of lie, and so he insists that the whole truth will be spoken for the first forty-five minutes of the film. At the end, when we discover that Oja Kodar, the passersby from earlier, is in fact not Pablo Picasso's daughter nor did she sell any of the paintings of herself painted by Picasso to a museum, Welles declares that he did lie his head off.
In its constantly time-switching narrative, freeze-frames, and sense of self-consciousness, Orson Welles made one of his greatest achievements on film - a master class on experimentation with the medium and the infinite possibilities presented with tackling the film-within-the-film. It is a shame it was not discovered initially, but some of its style and rapid cutting is evident in Al Pacino's superb "Looking for Richard," an expose on Shakespeare and Richard III. Francois Truffaut declared "F For Fake" as one of the best films of the 1970's - he could not have been more right. Right up with "Citizen Kane," "Touch of Evil," and "The Trial," "F For Fake" reigns supreme.
Footnote: There are cameos by Joseph Cotten and film editor on "Kane," Robert Wise. There is also a brief sequence with Oja and late actor Laurence Harvey at an airport "from quite another film," says Welles. I wonder if this was footage for his uncompleted film "The Deep" since Welles can be seen in his cape minus a beard.
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