goods116 As a hardcore 70s film buff I really wanted to like this 7.8 rated film by a master, Orson Welles. Unfortunately, there is really nothing here, it's just a complex editing job that initially seems interesting but in the end is tedious. You can sort of listen to the narration and be intrigued, and the editing was painstakingly handled, but again, there is nothing much going on here. I consider this simply a curiosity for 70s film fans or Orson Wells completists. For everyone else, move along.

ironhorse_iv Known in France as 'Truths and Lies'; 'F for Fake' is far from serving as a traditional documentary. Made in 1974, the film is a blend of quick time, dreamlike French New Wave attention-deficit editing. Remind me of Jean Luc Godard and René Clair who used editing to alternately build and deconstruct. It was very surreal, yet somewhat annoying. The whole overused of dated freeze frame was irritating. Despite that, I did like the breaking the fourth wall style filmmaking, with a flair of very questionable information journalism by an unreliable narrator. Welles's rambling is spell-bounding. I like that Welles also draws parallels between the main subject and his own brush with early notoriety. Orson Welles does wonders as the voice of God for this film. I also, kinda dig the fictional movie re-enactments with him, using film noir styles. All of the smoke and mirrors, work for this film, very well. Even if some of them, were cut with odd unrelated footage such as opening staring/airport scene. I guess, Orson Welles just wanted showcase how hot his companion, Oja Kodar, was with the endless amounts of butt shots and nudity. Welles even filmed a trailer that lasted for nine minutes and featured several shots of a topless Kodar. The trailer was rejected by the US distributors to no surprised. I think, Welles went a little overboard with the whole 'trophy wife' concept. In truth, her presence in the film wasn't really needed, as she has nothing to do with the main stories. While, her scenes are somewhat pointless. It's still somewhat fit with the theme of the film. So, it's really hard to say, if this movie was documentary at all. It really broke the standards mode of what is documentary with. For me, it felt more like a participatory docufiction. It's clear by the recent events that happen during production that is impossible for original director François Reichenbach to make an observational type film about fame art forger, painter Elmyr de Hory. So, he first hired B-movie cinematographer Gary Graver to help finish the film. While, he did contributes all footage filmed in the U.S., his work was very choppy. His interviews with Hory and Irving barely explain, anything about the guy, such as Elymr de Hory's jail-time and his open homosexuality. What we are left with is an incomplete picture of de Hory, a complex, but highly enigmatic man unable to shed his outlaw persona, whose notions of morality conformed to the exigencies he believed, that helps with his survival. Sadly, we will never truly know, who the real guy is, as he commit suicide, shortly in 2 years after this movie wrap. Fearing that no audience member, would take the film's seriously. 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. It soon become aware to Welles, with the circumstances of the production, he can instead, turn the documentary into a meditation on the nature of fakery particularly with regards to authorship and authenticity within the three main media of art: writing, illustration and filmmaking. Without spoiling the movie, too much, I have to say, this performative documentary was very exceptional for its thought provoking subject. You really don't know, what to believe. It's hard to know, what's real and what's not, with this film and whether, does it ultimately, even matters. After all, Welles reflects on this in-film, so well. He suggest that maybe authenticity isn't important to art, because everything will finally wear away by time. No matter, if it's fake or not. It doesn't matter all that much, in the long scheme. In many ways, that was the perfect way to end the film. However, it wasn't. 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. In the end, he wanted the final laugh. Overall: For a long time the film was Welles' final film, until the posthumous release of 'The Other Side of the Wind' in 2015. In a way, it's should had been. It was a wonderful entertaining film. Remind me, so much of 2010's documentary, 'Exit through the Gift Shop' with its questionable confusing artist style. Highly recommended. It really deserves to be in the Criterion Collection, big time.

Michael_Elliott 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. This really isn't your typical documentary and many critics of the film will say it makes very little sense and all in all is nothing more than an incoherent mess. I wouldn't go that far but I think F FOR FAKE is certainly more style than actual substance. I say that because Welles visual style here is something that you didn't see in documentaries at the time and I'd say that nothing that followed really looked the same. The documentary has an avant garde feel to it and most of them comes from the editing. The editing goes all over the place with all sorts of weird edits, different styles of cameras being used and the editing usually takes the story and tells it in a different time frame and I think this is where people get lost. The look of the film is certainly something impressive and you really can turn the volume down and be entertained just by the look that Welles made. However, this "style" is so good that it really takes away from the stories being told and I think it really kills most of the interest in the subjects. I think the way the story goes back and forth does make the film incoherent but this is also due to the fact that the material just isn't worth following. I think had Welles made a more traditional documentary then the story would have been more entertaining. As is, the story just gets lost in the style and in the end you really don't learn anything about either man. We even get a quick clip about The War of the World hoax that landed Welles not in jail but in Hollywood. What actually keeps the film entertaining is the performance of Welles being himself and hosting. He comes off so good and charming that it at least keeps you awake even when the story itself goes under. F FOR FAKE is considered by some to be horrid while others see it as another Welles masterpiece. I'm in the middle thinking it shows some signs of greatness but in the end it's just too rough around the edges to really work.

Sean Lamberger 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.