F for Fake fantastic French film of forgery, falsehoods
Ian Pugh
Issue date: 4/22/05 Section: Entertainment
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At some level, all movies deal with one form of manipulation: of emotion, of the facts, of perception. Of course, few filmmakers would be willing to admit this. For at least the duration of their film, they want you to take their own world as the undisputed truth. Orson Welles' final completed film, F for Fake, appropriately studies fakery, from the biggest perpetrators to the everyday fraudulence in which we all indulge; even in Welles' own line of work. At the same time, however, the film disavows any use of deceit on its own part: "We'll use all the available facts, and tell you nothing but the truth." But at what point does a lie become the truth, and when will we know the difference?
Welles brilliantly sets the tone for the film by using a celebrated form trickery: stage magic. Welles opens the film himself at a train station, performing a few sleight of hand tricks with keys and coins to the delight of nearby children. But there's a catch. Welles distracts us with various shots around the station, and a few words exchanged with a mysterious woman (Oja Kodar). The visual veracity of his tricks can no longer be trusted. Are they being performed the same way that a magician performs for a live crowd? Where does the lie exist? Is there a lie at all? What is this film about, anyway?
On the surface, F for Fake is a documentary about Elmyr de Hory, the world's most successful and most notorious art forger - a man who could produce a look alike of a Matisse or a Picasso in about an hour, one of such high caliber that it could fool the most experienced art expert. He even claims that more than a few of his forgeries hang in the same prominent museums as the genuine article. Also under scrutiny is Clifford Irving, the man who wrote Fake!, de Hory's biography. As it turns out, Irving himself is also a fraud. He was also the author of the so-called "authorized" autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, which was later debunked as sheer fiction by Hughes himself. It was Hughes, wasn't it?
But in reality - whatever that word means, anyway - much of that footage was shot for a BBC documentary in collaboration with director/cinematographer Francois Reichenbach, and edited into this film at his leisure. The film even cuts back and forth between the documentary and Welles sitting in the editing room, attempting to decipher all of the players he presents. Something seems off about the whole thing. There are a few shots that are clearly scripted (in the editing room, the film de-spools right on cue), which place the whole film into doubt. There are even times when Welles's mouth doesn't quite match his words; he's saying the exact same phrases, but there is the vague suspicion that he's dubbing over himself. But why? Just how many levels of fakery are at work here? As the filmmaker asks, are there "fake fakers" at play?
 Media Credit: sensesofcinema.com |
Many have said that the presence of cameras immediately debunks the idea of a "real" documentary; people and events act themselves out differently when they know they are being recorded. Welles revels in this idea with his own film, and poses important questions about it: how it is that falsehoods become heralded as facts, and where talent and gullibility plays into it all. Controversial tricksters have come and gone - most notoriously Michael Moore and Fox News - but F for Fake will remain unequivocally modern, by revealing just how easily one can manipulate the truth for his own purposes. It is a dizzying, existential film that enjoys manipulating its audience, and the audience will never be so pleased to know that they are being manipulated.
But then there is an entirely different level thrown into the mix; the film becomes a catharsis and reflection on Welles' own career. After all, much of the man's life has rested on the fine art of the lie, not least of all the "War of the Worlds" radio fiasco that caused a countrywide panic. He ruminates on his first film, Citizen Kane, regarded by many as the greatest American film of all time. But it is a film of such unbelievable originality and audacity that Hollywood couldn't contain its filmmaker, eventually blacklisting him from the American film community. In F for Fake, Welles alternates between bitterness and amusement ("I started at the top, and I've been working my way down ever since"). He invites fellow Kane alumni Joseph Cotten and William Alland along for the ride, both to snub their noses at the film and reveal surprising facts about it. Charles Foster Kane was based on William Randolph Hearst, but which tycoon was going to act as his original model? "You're going to have to believe this," Welles instructs us with that trademark smirk.
 Media Credit: popularposters.com |
F for Fake rightfully makes no real conclusions, but Welles offers a theory about the importance of art: it may be eroded by the sands of time, or revealed as a fraud or a forgery, but its purpose may lie in the fact that it existed at all. "Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much." Surprising words from a man whose name and works will survive as long as film itself exists. F for Fake may stand as one of the most poignant final films of any director's career, one last "trick" played on himself. After living in the shadow of Citizen Kane for thirty years, he finally comes to terms with the movie that defined (and perhaps ruined) his life, by categorizing it as just another work of art, subject to the same forgotten fate as any other of man's efforts throughout the centuries.
Did the trick work? Who can say?
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