Genre:
Avant-garde / Exp
Release Date: 04/26/2005
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 88 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Criterion
The final directorial project the legendary
Orson Welles completed during his lifetime,
F for Fake is less a
documentary than an example of cinematic free association on the topic of trickery. Much of the film is in fact drawn from other sources, most notably an unfinished
documentary by
Francois Reichenbach on the notorious
Elmyr de Hory, whose extremely skillful forgeries of famous paintings caused scandals amongst art collectors and experts. In an additional bit of irony,
de Hory's interviewer is author
Clifford Irving, who became infamous due to a forgery of his own: a falsified autobiography of
Howard Hughes.
Welles openly re-edits and manipulates this footage, using it as a spine for his own commentary, arguing that there is an extremely close relationship between art and lying, and citing instances from his own career to prove the point. Through a combination of
documentary and staged footage,
Welles attempts to illustrate the artifice behind all filmmaking, even that of a supposedly non-fiction variety.
~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
