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!

I've seen almost everything there is to see from the man, and if I'm convinced of something it's of the fact that Orson Welles was a genius. Not only a man with promising skill, who made a few great films and wandered the desert for the rest of his life; no, he made utter masterworks to the very end, actual innovation, reinvention and rethinking what cinema is, and I don't think we give him enough credit for what he has done if we speak of him only in relation to "Citizen Kane" (1941) or speak of him as a tragic figure who could have made a difference.The last of his feature films, only followed by "Filming 'Othello'" (1978) five years later, "F for Fake" (1973) is such a remarkable tour-de-force trip through the secret passageways of the possibilities of cinema I think it'll take one lifetime to really get over it: hyper-sensory to the extreme, "Fake" shows that bodacious cinema is accomplished not through expensive digital effects (not that there's anything wrong with expensive digital effects per se, note!) but through rhythm and expectation in editing. Promises, not explanations. Hesitation and release. The narrative is a profoundly multidimensional behemoth of self-reference it's near- impossible to delineate them all in relation to each other, an attribute that reiteratively underlines the impossible cognitive capacities Welles had to guide the film material into the film it now is, all this both premeditatedly before and during shooting but especially in the editing room.Imamura's "Ningen jôhatsu" (1967) and Kiarostami's "Nema-ye Nazdik" (1990) join this film in enriching our lives and making them a little bit less… fake?It's become a running joke that this film, too, was badly received at the time. But you know, "The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius." Wild words, Oscar, but I agree.

First of all, it needs to be said that F For Fake is an entertaining film as quick witted as it is briskly edited and strongly featuring Orson Welles on superb form. The bulk of the film concerns the art forger Elmyr de Hory in a separate documentary made for the BBC in 1970 by François Reichnbach. But Welles' overdubbed introduction, his re- worked edition of Reichenbach's work and the tumbling, fragmented overlaid additions including those of his girlfriend Oja Kodar and the hagiographically soft-focused Chartres cathedral turn this into an extended solipsism of what counts as 'real'. The art 'forgeries', driven by the market might not have been forged by the artist but by the dealer - and of course, works that have been on gallery walls for years are now the art anyway. The most famous artist of them all, Pablo Picasso, is quoted as denying his own work with 'even the real Picasso can make a fake Picasso' before the film dissolves into a dubious narrative about how Oja duped the artist into producing an entire period of his own work that retrospectively he couldn't claim. All the while, Welles brings up moments in his career in his steady, articulate, confiding drawl, reminding us that he started as famous and everything declined from there - the same trajectory of fame as that 'enjoyed' by the builders of Chartres cathedral, a totem of civilisation whose provenance is entirely irrelevant. The whole film is quick, colourful, sexy and fun and rendered even more so by the light but cultured jazz touch of Michel Legrand. 7/10

Boy oh boy, I see a lot good reviews for this here. Okay, I love "Citizen Kane" and "Touch Evil" as much as the next guy, and Orson Welles was treated poorly by Hollywood, but that doesn't give him a free pass. Peter Bogdanovich was an early champion of this, right about the time Bogdanovich forgot how to make good movies. Coincidence? This is a sloppy, er..um.. nonlinear documentary about con men. It starts to tell its story about an art forger, but then it backtracks to his homeland of Hungary, then Welles tells a Hungarian joke, then it gets back to the main story, then Welles does a magic trick, then the camera oogles a hot chick for 10 minutes, then Welles waxes on about the wonderful Mr. Welles, etc., ad nauseum.Genius editing? Come on now this is a mess. I think that Mr. Welles had a lot of haphazard footage that really didn't add up to much, and this is the result. He was able to piece together something not entirely incoherent and the subject is sort of interesting - hence two stars instead of one - but I certainly didn't witness a "deep" exploration of art and fakery with "masterful editing".I suspect that if Welles had passed gas into the camera for 90 minutes his followers would have raved: "Neglected genius Orson Welles has done it once again, filming a gastrointestinal masterpiece years ahead of the Tom Greenesque oeuvre, perfectly capturing the flatulence of modern society! 'F for Fart' sublimely cuts-the-cheese to a passionless universe!" Well, I say the Emperor has no clothes, this is crap and for Wellesian cultists only.