F for Fake - Criterion Collection
Starring: William Alland, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Peter Bogdanovich, Joseph Cotten, Gary Graver
Price: $25.68
To call Orson Welles's F for Fake, a documentary would be somewhat 'misleading, but the deception is the subject of this curious film essay. Welles ruminates on the nature of artistic fakery through two examples, that of infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory and the writer Clifford Irving, whose bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes off a small flurry of media in 1970. Postmodernist who he is, Wells then proceeds to narrate and edit the film in a perversely frenetic blur the lines between what is real and what is deception, and for an often confusing but engaging work of art in itself. We also see the video that we were to look like it was spliced together in Welles assembly hall. The specter of Welles often maligned later career hangs over the proceedings like a challenge - he is actually going to finish this strange movie about chicanery, or becomes one of the many unfinished experiments of his twilight years? Happily, Welles concludes the the proceedings with a delightful sequence about Picasso, lust, and what constitutes real art. F For Fake is a prime example of a master filmmaker who had at least a couple of tricks left his sleeve. - Ryan Boudinot
Price: $25.68
To call Orson Welles's F for Fake, a documentary would be somewhat 'misleading, but the deception is the subject of this curious film essay. Welles ruminates on the nature of artistic fakery through two examples, that of infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory and the writer Clifford Irving, whose bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes off a small flurry of media in 1970. Postmodernist who he is, Wells then proceeds to narrate and edit the film in a perversely frenetic blur the lines between what is real and what is deception, and for an often confusing but engaging work of art in itself. We also see the video that we were to look like it was spliced together in Welles assembly hall. The specter of Welles often maligned later career hangs over the proceedings like a challenge - he is actually going to finish this strange movie about chicanery, or becomes one of the many unfinished experiments of his twilight years? Happily, Welles concludes the the proceedings with a delightful sequence about Picasso, lust, and what constitutes real art. F For Fake is a prime example of a master filmmaker who had at least a couple of tricks left his sleeve. - Ryan Boudinot