Review of F for Fake (1973) by X. T — 20 Jul 2007

"Ladies and gentleman, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact. ".

Orson Welles' last film is an innovative documentary/film/essay (what genre do you classify it as?) about all sorts of trickery, cons, and lies. It starts with the story of the most infamous art forger of the 20th century, Elmyr de Hory, and his biographer, Clifford Irving, who himself became notorious for writing the fake autobiography of the hermit celebrity Howard Hughes. So if the faker wrote a biography about another faker, is Elmyr a fake faker? Throughout the film Welles works as our narrator, appearing often in both in the documentary footage and the editing room. He calls himself a charlatan, saying that acting is a sort of forgery. Welles also relates his own story before he became a filmmaker, when he was broke in France and had to pretend that he was a famous American actor to get a job for the stage, as well as stories about Citizen Kane, and a story about Picasso. The line between truth and lie is twisted and blurred. Welles' editing is absolutely brilliant. It is easy to see this film's influence on modern documentaries like that of Michael Moore.