F for Fake

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Welles performing magic tricks for some children while Kodar watches nearby. Welles quotes Robert-Houdin to the effect that a magician is just an actor. Welles promises that for the next hour everything in the film will be based on solid fact. Kodar is then shown strolling around a street in a miniskirt while being ogled by the men on the street. Welles reveals the footage is taken from another experiment about girl-watching, where Kodar deliberately drew attention to herself and the men were unaware they were being filmed. Welles says her story will continue later in the film, and then narrates the story of Elmyr de Hory, an art forger who sold many fake paintings to museums and collectors all over the world. Elmyr is shown throwing a dinner party at his home in Ibiza and being feted by European society, although he dances around the question of whether he is guilty or not. One of those filmed is Clifford Irving, who had published a biography of Elmyr called Fake, and later in a notorious scandal was revealed to have been the forger of Howard Hughes's diary. Welles discusses the irony of Irving commenting on Elmyr's forgery while having committed a version of it himself. Irving and Elmyr tell about the art dealers who were fooled by the forgeries, and Welles considers the question whether this means art dealers and appraisers are fake also.
Welles presents more of Irving's story of having had secret contact with Hughes, and the odd stories of Hughes's behavior that may or may not have been true. He wonders if believing such stories makes a person credulous or not, and questions the true wisdom of so-called experts, who verified Irving's forgery as authentic. Reichenbach is shown telling how Elmyr provided him with several paintings of questionable authenticity, but the art dealers he gave them to were willfully blind to it. Welles notes that Elmyr doesn't even own the house he lives in; it's provided for him by an art dealer. Welles recounts his own past use of fakery: how he got a job in Ireland by falsely claiming to be a famous New York actor, and how his broadcast of War of the Worlds made deliberate use of fake news to enhance the story. He also notes the coincidence that his first film Citizen Kane was originally going to be a fictionalized version of Howard Hughes.
Irving describes how Elmyr was nearly destitute when younger and subsisted in America by making and selling forgeries that were indistinguishable from the real works, while remaining one step ahead of the law through frequent relocations. He finally moved to Ibiza, but was not prosecuted for lack of witnesses to the actual forging, as well as the scandal that might be aroused by revealing the depth of the art market's complicity in the deception. Elmyr insists he never signed any forgery, and Welles wonders whether, given the fact that all art eventually falls away to ruin, a signature truly matters to any art work. He illustrates the point by shots of the cathedral of Chartres, pointing out that the names of the men who created the magnificent building and the sculptures which adorn it are unknown. They did not sign their work, but it has endured.
Welles finally presents Kodar's story: she holidayed in the same village as Picasso, who noticed her and painted 22 pieces with her as the model. She insisted she be allowed to keep the paintings, but later when Picasso read about an acclaimed exhibit of 22 new pieces of his, he flew there in a rage, only to discover the pieces were all forgeries. Kodar took Picasso to her grandfather, the forger, who defended his work with pride while Picasso angrily demanded the paintings back. This dialogue is presented by Welles and Kodar re-enacting the parts of the grandfather and Picasso respectively. Welles then confesses that he had promised everything in the "next hour" was true, and that hour had already passed. He admits the entire story of Kodar, her grandfather, and Picasso was made up. He apologizes, quotes Picasso's statement that art is a lie that makes us see the truth, and bids the audience good night.

Tags: alternate history

Review:
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Welles chronicles the true story of the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory (as well as his official biographer and future fraud, Clifford Irving, who penned the Howard Hughes autobiography-that-wasn't-really-an-autobiography), but it doesn't feel like a documentary at all.If you do not share Welles' passion for the subject of fraud and deception (he even recaps his own infamous War of the Worlds broadcast which nearly cost him his job at RKO), this may be a bit tiring to sit through.
And the finale  in which Welles tells an elaborate story about Kodar  turns into a fun and well-edited - but extremely overlong  verbal game between Welles and Kodar, preceded by an even more tiring sequence of Kodar once again walking around in provocative clothing, eventually shedding them and being captured on film in the nude by Welles for an extended length of time.
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.
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.
Orson Welles's last full-length theatrical (ahem, emphasis on theatrical) film released before his death at times is almost like the 'News on the March' segment of Citizen Kane spread out in various spurts, and then totally played upon.
Suddenly, after getting inundated with sound-bytes and trickery with the editing style (which ranks with the best Welles and his team), verite camera-work (by a talented Gary Graver), and images that freeze up, zoom in, get inopportune poses from monkeys, and bits and pieces of a French villa and dozens of paintings, things slow down.
Elmyr D'Hory the art forger and Clifford Irving, his biographer are profiled, as well as Welles' own career as a faker.
Anyway, 100% editing genius makes a fake movie out of a TV special (made for French public Tv, as I understand it) by tacking on 40 minutes of inspired nonsense by Welles himself, proving that he truly is a magician for the masses..
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.
Not only a man with promising skill, who made a few great films and wandered the desert for the rest of his life; no, he made utter masterworks to the very end, actual innovation, reinvention and rethinking what cinema is, and I don't think we give him enough credit for what he has done if we speak of him only in relation to "Citizen Kane" (1941) or speak of him as a tragic figure who could have made a difference.The last of his feature films, only followed by "Filming 'Othello'" (1978) five years later, "F for Fake" (1973) is such a remarkable tour-de-force trip through the secret passageways of the possibilities of cinema I think it'll take one lifetime to really get over it: hyper-sensory to the extreme, "Fake" shows that bodacious cinema is accomplished not through expensive digital effects (not that there's anything wrong with expensive digital effects per se, note!) but through rhythm and expectation in editing.
The narrative is a profoundly multidimensional behemoth of self-reference it's near- impossible to delineate them all in relation to each other, an attribute that reiteratively underlines the impossible cognitive capacities Welles had to guide the film material into the film it now is, all this both premeditatedly before and during shooting but especially in the editing room.Imamura's "Ningen jôhatsu" (1967) and Kiarostami's "Nema-ye Nazdik" (1990) join this film in enriching our lives and making them a little bit less fake?It's become a running joke that this film, too, was badly received at the time.
Thoroughly "Modern" Art. F FOR FAKE is arguably Orson Welles's greatest film work.
Just as CITIZEN KANE was exemplary of Baroque art, F FOR FAKE is the celluloid version of a Picasso painting.And in the Modern world where truth is relative, and art is subjective, Welles forces us to ask -- "When the authority says fake is real, what is real and what is fake?"This film works on many, many levels.
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.
The other main subject of the film is artist Elmyr de Hory, a man who has spent his life painting fakes of famous masterpieces, sometimes selling them to museums as real works by the original artists.
Interspersed among these stories are bits where Welles does magic tricks to illustrate points, etc., and he also addresses the fact that his career began as a fraud when he first lied on his resume and then created a radio sensation with "War of the Worlds".I really wanted to love this film and find it profound since I am such a Welles devotee, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.
He was able to piece together something not entirely incoherent and the subject is sort of interesting - hence two stars instead of one - but I certainly didn't witness a "deep" exploration of art and fakery with "masterful editing".I suspect that if Welles had passed gas into the camera for 90 minutes his followers would have raved: "Neglected genius Orson Welles has done it once again, filming a gastrointestinal masterpiece years ahead of the Tom Greenesque oeuvre, perfectly capturing the flatulence of modern society!
Welles is having a great time with this film, boasting his profound ingenuity in all things art and human nature.
Its main subjects are Elmyr, a pre-eminent art forger, Clifford Irving, who faked the Howard Hughes biography, Orson Welles himself briefly (chiefly the War of the Worlds broadcast), and Elmyr's precursor, another Hungarian forger who is supposedly the best forger who ever lived.
The documentary is about fakes, mainly two big ones: Elmyr de Hory, who could replicate the great art masters such as Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, etc., and actually sold these works to museums; and the con man extraordinare, Clifford Irving, who wrote a book about de Hory and then wrote a bio of Howard Hughes, based on interviews and meetings with him, none of which had ever taken place.There's a free-wheeling, improvised feeling to this documentary.
By the end of the film, the viewer is all too aware that they have been watching Orson Welles - noted film maker, magician and one time star - having a bit of fun.
Was it this awareness that made him appear somewhat, to this casual observer, self-loathing in his later years?After a testy, or maybe just well-edited, scene between the art forger and his biographer and forger to be, Welles finally offers forgiveness for all the fakers and forgers in an absolutely heart-stopping 2 1/2 minute rumination on the cathedral at Chartres.
Initially, the subjects are master art forger Elmyr de Hory and his would-be biographer Clifford Irving, also author of the infamous Howard Hughes biography.
A documentary about fraud and fakery, which focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger.Clifford Irving is something of a legend, and definitely belongs in this film for his work as author of a fraudulent Howard Hughes authorized biography.
This film purports that Irving and deHory both worked their schemes from the same tiny island, and yet were in no way connected.Sadly, De Hory would commit suicide a few years after the release of Welles' film, on hearing that Spain had agreed to turn him over to the French authorities."F for Fake" faced widespread popular rejection.
He makes a promise to the audience, "For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact." F for Fake is part autobiography of iconoclast Orson Welles who made a name for himself directing, producing and acting in "The Best Movie Ever Made," Citizen Kane (1941) (perhaps you've heard of it).
Yet the film also encapsulates the life's work of Elmyr de Hory, arguably the most infamous art forger to ever live.
'F for Fake' was one of Orson Welles' follies of his later film making years, where many promising projects got abandoned or were left unfinished.
Much of the film is devoted to an art faker who claims he has never signed his paintings, despite them hanging in every major gallery, with clear signatures of the great masters; and his biographer, Clifford Irving, who himself perpetuated the great Howard Hughes hoax.
In the words of Jean Cocteau, "Crushing Automatism" is what I'd say about this film and the iconic hand gesture displaying size or margin.This is one of those absolute movies, no one could make, and has made since, only a Orson Welles could have pulled this intricate cutting and pacing, that enveloped modern day editing techniques, and with such a cutting edge story, nothing goes wrong, except you are just fascinated by the narrative told by the man who played himself.
For a filmmaker who frequently declared that the art of cinema originate from editing, Welles' last major completed film must've been his most comprehensive endeavor.The answer to Welles's eponymous fraud here, as it is throughout his filmography, is our mind's eye and the lively cooperation it gives, most often unsuspectingly, with his own contrivances, the sort of unwitting or subliminal participation that magicians and actors both put their faith in.
Those who resolve that the exposés of assorted deceptions including those of de Hory, Clifford Irving and Welles himself are insincere and obvious may be missing the extent to which these very shams are camouflaging the committing of numerous others, some of which are neither.Likewise, we should look especially in detail at what we're being shown in the early "girl watching" sequence, maybe the most elaborately cut section in the film, rivaled only by the later sequence given to Pablo Picasso's eyeballing of Kodar.
"F for Fake", directed and staring Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) is an one-of-a-kind documentary about trickery, fraud and lies.
Apart from Almyr and his paintings, the movie tells stories about what is art, and the mysteries of what is fake and true in our lives - with the most tasty and wonderful Orson-Wellian sarcasm.
It's Editing, very New and Off putting for the Period, using Freeze Frames, Swoops, Pans, and Fanciful Film Techniques Not usually Found in Nonfiction, add a Surreal Sense to the supposed Veracity of this Type of Thing.It manages to Comment on Real Life Figures like Art Forger "Elmyr De Hory" and Literary Hoaxer "Clifford Irving" and Their respective "Careers" as Real Fakers.
Writer/Director Orson Welles' F for Fake is a fast-paced, complex, surrealistic and philosophically thought-provoking documentary about fraud, fakery, and fictions.
Even though its style is still novel when seen now, 30 years after F for Fake's first, quiet release in Europe, it was even more unusual in the context of the 1970s, and it presaged "MTV-style editing" by almost 10 years (considering that the style wasn't even the norm on MTV when that cable channel first appeared).Even trying to tell someone what the film is literally about is quite complex (fitting for something that gives its title on screen as "?: About Fakery"), but we could say that it circles around six primary personalities, if we include Welles himself, who is frequently present on screen as a narrator/tour guide/resident magician.
Next up we have Clifford Irving, who wrote a biography of Elmyr de Hory, but who is perhaps more famous for writing a fake "authorized" biography of Howard Hughes.
It just happens to be documentary about creating fictions, whether impostors, as in de Hory's paintings (and amusingly, Welles himself--who had formal visual art skills--does a cartoonish portrait of Howard Hughes and signs it "Elmyr"); deceptive statements covering fictions, as in Irving's fake biography of Howard Hughes; manipulating public perceptions, as in the case of Hughes' and Picasso's public relations; creating artificial situations, as in Kodar's "piece" involving recording the reactions of men to her stroll through traffic; or combinations of all of these tactics, as in Welles' own work as an artist/entertainer, including the War of the Worlds radio broadcast (1938), which is portrayed here with clips from Earth vs.
An art forger, a biographer who faked having wrote from a legitimate source(Howard Hughes himself), and some 17 minutes about a Oja Koder's deathbed grandfather wanting Picasso's approval over 22 paintings of his beautiful daughter--Orson Welles sure knew how to weave quite a compelling film.
François Reichenbach, who shot a documentary about Elmry, partnered with Welles over footage with both Irving and de Hory, and the rest is history, F for Fake a dedicated film to the art of charlatanism.
The thrust of the movie concentrates on Elmyr de Hory (the master art forger) and Clifford Irving (the author of the fake biography of Howard Hughes).
Of course the movie would not be complete without Welles ultimately pulling a fast one on the audience before it is over.Also contained on the DVD is the 90-minute film "Orson Welles: The One-Man Band." This is a collection of archival material of some of Welles' work, including things that had never been released before.
Unfortunately, it means the subject of his film, Elmyr, didn't get the time he deserved and he was probably the more interesting story.The great tragedy of Orson Welles was that he peaked early, and then spent the rest of his career sputtering, finally doing wine commercials and awful documentaries....
Reichenbach then hired fame director Orson Welles to edit the documentary to include Elmyr de Hory's biographer Clifford Irving, who was revealed to be a forger himself, when his fame Howard Hughes "autobiography" came out to be, a hoax.
In short, I guess, Orson Welles wanted to troll his audience, a little more, by adding 17 more minutes to the runtime, to show how fake, this movie can get.
The first half of the film starts like any standard factual look at specific people involved in these acts of fakery, including author Clifford Irving who faked a biography of Howard Hughes and Elmyr de Hory who became one of the 20th century's great art forgers.
Except for the first part, which could have been a great documentary as opposed to Orson Welles acting cute on the camera with his buddies, making fun of the two subjects, one of them being an art forger and another being a writer who wrote a book on said forger and then himself faked the world out by pretending to have met the reclusive Howard Hughes - and then writing a book on the meeting.
Clifford Irving, the man who faked a Howard Hughes Biography, plays himself in this Orsen Welles phony documentary, about Howard Hughes.
This fake documentary has a better reputation than Irving would get years later when he is involved in a movie about his fake bio of Hughes.There is something about the majesty of Welles voice that is like a fine wine that is uncorked at it's time.
Orson Welles's final major movie was met with criticism at the time of release.
Orson Welles wanted to create a brand new genre of film which mixed documentary and fiction.
It was fascinating learning about how De Hory carried out his art forgeries and how Irving fooled the world into thinking that Howard Hughes had written an autobiography.