James Fisher
11/1/2017
Documentary Studies
Barker
FLME 4240
Everything You Are About to See is True: F for Fake and Orson Welles’ Trickery
Orson Welles was a landmark filmmaker in the history of American cinema with such films as Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight, Othello, and F for Fake. Citizen Kane was long regarded as “the greatest film of all-time” until Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo took the number one spot in the Sight & Sound poll in 2012. Welles had a troubled relationship with Hollywood and struggled to get films made. His last completed film was his 1975 F for Fake which is on trickery, fraud, and authorship. It has been called a documentary and a film essay but Welles reportedly told critic Jonathan Rosenbaum that he was making a “new kind of film”. “The film he was working on was then called Hoax, and he said it had something to do with the art forger Elmyr de Hory and the recent scandal involving Clifford Irving and Howard Hughes. “A documentary?” “No, not a documentary—a new kind of film,” he replied, though he didn’t elaborate.” (Rosenbaum) Bill Nichols refers to the film as a reflexive documentary. According to Nichols, the use of a reflexive documentary is to “draw attention to the conventions, assumptions, and expectations underlying documentary film.” (Nichols 156) The film raises questions about the authentic and the fraudulent. It features Welles himself, his partner and actress Oja Kodar, art forger Elmyr de Hory, and author Clifford Irving who is known for his fake autobiography of Howard Hughes.
F for Fake predominately features three great charlatans, Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving, and Orson Welles himself. Elmyr de Hory was infamous for being an art forger and had a skill at forging works by Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, and Modigliani. His forgeries tricked many art collectors and experts. Elmyr told his story to Clifford Irving, who wrote the biography Fake! The Story of Elmyr de Hory the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time. Elmyr de Hory enjoyed his celebrity status until his death in 1976. Elmyr de Hory’s biographer Clifford Irving also had his fair share of controversy. Irving became infamous for his Howard Hughes autobiography which he wrote with the help of children’s book author Richard Suskind. After Howard Hughes pulled out of public life, Irving and Suskind came up with an elaborate scheme to write the autobiography. They would forge Hughes’ handwriting to a degree that it convinced the handwriting experts. The hoax was revealed when Howard Hughes told reporters that he never met Irving and the funds given to Irving and Suskind, under a pseudonym, were investigated. Orson Welles, before Citizen Kane, was known for his radio broadcast with the Mercury Theater of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds which was so convincing that people actually believed that aliens were invading Earth and there was a panic that involved the police. Welles’ career known for illusions and trickery. Welles himself even calls himself a charlatan in the opening of F for Fake by stating that actors are like magicians.
With the opening of the film, Orson Welles gives the introduction, “Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this film is about trickery and fraud, about lies”. This introduction sets the audience up for what they are about to see with Welles’ film. Welles expresses that for at least an hour that what the audience is watching is the truth while the word “fake” is scrawled on the screen. “It could also be a statement of intent to question the nature of cinema and authorship, storytelling and illusion… at the very least, an honest and provocative declaration of the subject of the piece.” (Kahn) The fog in the opening of the film along with the magic trick that Welles performs serves as visual cues for what the film is about and what it is trying to say. The fog obscures the view in front of us which symbolizes that, as the audience, we are unsure of what is in front of us. Welles says he is telling the truth with this film but he is also telling us not to trust him because he is a charlatan. “F for Fake was for Welles a playful repository of public history intertwined with private in-jokes as well as duplicitous meanings, an elaborate blend of sense and nonsense that carries us along regardless of what’s actually being said.” (Rosenbaum) By the end of the film, the audience knows that Orson Welles has been playing with them.
Welles ends the film with a fabricated story about Oja Kodar being a muse of Picasso and that Kodar’s grandfather painted forgeries of them that were worth roughly $750 million. Welles tells his elaborate story and then states that, “For the past seventeen minutes, I’ve been lying my head off.” Throughout the entire film, Welles has been acting as a reliable narrator telling us the the true life stories of con artists Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving sandwiched between mirror images of Oja Kodar which is the subject of the lie Welles tells towards the end.
“…what is seen in the film that seems real is not as real as it appears — but most especially we can’t trust the filmmaker Welles himself, he will lie to us and deceive us, if only to get at the heart of the movie’s main contention: you cannot trust anyone, especially anyone who asserts his or her authority without any basis or proof.” (Castle)
This lie about Oja Kodar gets at shows that Welles is an unreliable narrator. This was Welles’ way to mislead the audience. The choppy editing of the film was influenced by the French New Wave and specifically Jean-Luc Godard’s editing style and frequent use of jump cuts. The film also uses footage from François Reichenbach, whose outtakes from an art forgery documentary were used, and Gary Graver, who filmed Oja Kodar being ogled on the street. Picasso once said that, “art is a lie that makes us realize the truth”. Orson Welles, with F for Fake, realizes what Picasso has said. Welles calls himself a professional liar which is true because he is an actor.
References
Castle, Robert. “F For Fake: The Ultimate Mirror of Orson Welles.” Bright Lights Film Journal, 15 Dec. 2014, brightlightsfilm.com/f-for-fake-the-ultimate-mirror-of- orson-welles#.WfkmnlfZ5SV.
Khan, Yasmeen. “Film | Film Features | Truths And Lies: F For Fake Revisited.” The Quietus, 8 Aug. 2012, thequietus.com/articles/09782-f-for-fake-orson-welles-bfi- reissue.
Nichols, Bill. “Chapter 7: How Can We Describe the Observational, Participatory, and Performative Modes of Documentary Production?” Introduction to Documentary, Indiana University Press, 2017, pp. 132–158.
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. “F For Fake: Orson Welles's Purloined Letter.” The Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com/current/posts/364-f-for-fake-orson-welles-s- purloined-letter.