F for Fake (1977)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

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. It lends a genuine feel into a fake F here. Welles experiments with the camera, and tells the story of a forger here.Lawrence Harvey appears as himself too. The Manchurian Candidate actor would die in less than a year after he appeared here. Welles would appear in a little known documentary later that year, Kelly Country with Sidney Nolan later that year. Welles would be very busy from here until his death later in the 1980's.Artists in simple greed is from artists pretty good or pretty bad says Welles in this film.

I found this semi-factual film listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it had average ratings by the critics, but I was always going to watch it, especially it starring and being directed by Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil). Basically actor and director Orson Welles hosts and narrates this free-form documentary which focuses on fraud, illusion, forgery, trickery and fakery. It is essentially questioning what is real and what is not, which can be found everywhere, including in the worlds of entertainment magic, non- fiction writing art paintings, with scammers and con artists. 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. The second half of the film uses Welles himself and Oja Kodar, credited as The Girl, in an acted scenario about life modelling, or something, really it is his own version of an illusion. With appearances and "interviews" by The Third Man's Joseph Cotten, Clifford Irving and The Manchurian Candidate's Laurence Harvey. You cannot complain about the direction or charm or Welles, but to be completely honest, I found this film rather odd and I don't know if I can totally place it in the genre it supposed to be, but perhaps that is the point, that you question whether all elements of what you are watching is true or false, it is certainly an intriguing documentary. Worth watching!

It's fitting that this gem should be reissued in the very month that the academic-pseud axis finally managed to oust Citizen Kane from its rightful Number One position in the International Best Film Poll conducted by Sight and Sound, itself pseud heavy, on behalf of pseuds everywhere. F For Fake is old Awesome at his most playful, most creative, most imaginative, three qualities sadly lacking in Pretender Hitchcock as evidenced by the pretentious Vertigo, new Number One (for all of five minutes). Against both the odds and the laws of nature Welles contrives to cram a quart of genius into a pint pot of screen, entertaining, instructing, amusing, diverting at one and the same time and always with a firm grasp on Style. A great bookend to Kane and one to savor.

A dissertation on liars, cheats, counterfeiters and forgers by Orson Welles that never settles on a subject, shooting style, genre or personality. Is it a documentary, a fantasy, a historical drama or an art film? Welles employs a crazed guerrilla documentary style, splicing half-conversations with notorious scammers on top of one another while concentrating on awkward close-ups, unflattering angles and incomplete thoughts. Orson handles most of the narration himself from a seat at the editing table, apparently in the process of chaotically piecing the final product together. It's a manic blend of jumbled thoughts that seems like something thrown together on a whim after filming every instant of a lavish European vacation, then poring over the resultant footage for its most quizzical moments. For what it's worth, I could watch Orson carry on conversation with nobodies for hours at a time, and on the few occasions the film delivers just that, it reaches a certain peak. If Welles could've let this story tell itself without overproducing every instant and later forcing himself into unnecessary dramatizations, it would have had my rapt attention. Instead, the second half nearly put me to sleep. A solid concept that's been overcomplicated and spoiled.