F For Fake - Superb Personal Film

[TheCharlatan]

Last night I watched F For Fake once agian. I must say I feel it was a wonderfully personal film by Welles in his usual fast paced style. You really must watch the film closely in order to not miss any important dialogue. It was in this film that I first discovered (through the brief Joseph Cotten clip) that Citizen Kane was originally to revolve around a Howard Hughes type character. The scenes in the restaurant are quite interesting as well, showing Orson as himself, not in character. We also see his interest in magic. I'd like to know if he made any films or books on magic and where he recieved his teaching.
It's a shame this title is not available on DVD. It's a true gem.
I have read that Elmyr de Hory commited suicide in 1976. Some say he "disappeared". Can anyone shed some light on this?

[allegra]

I'll leave de Hory's demise to others, but as for "F for Fake," it is indeed available on DVD, from Amazon.com's French affiliate, Amazon.fr...

[Sir Bygber Brown]

He died just before the film was to be released, from memory (and please correct me someone if i've remembered wrong) and some feared that the film would lose some of its relevance, but i think it makes it wonderfully more mysterious.

No idea about the circumstances.

[blunted by community]

suicide. he was convicted and was going in the slammer. graver said welles was terribly struck by the news, that welles really liked de hory.

glenn, that is what i read.

[Glenn Anders]

The Charlatan: I would take the emphasis on Howard Hughes as the subject of CITIZEN KANE with a grain of sea salt, though Welles and Hughes shared a fascination in each other. Does Cotton's observation come within the portion of the film in which Welles promised to tell the truth?

Yes, de Hory died broke, a suicide, in 1976.

Glenn

[Sir Bygber Brown]

Yes, its within the hour framing device - i think that if its within that hour, considering his comment at the end, then it had to be true, or his joke in the last fifteen minutes was pointless.

[Christopher]

The Charlatan:

Welles taught himself magic as a child. Roger Hill, headmaster of Todd School where Welles was sent as a boy after his mother's death, remembered he did magic tricks to entertain the other boys and also put on a magic show.

The only film I know about that Welles made on the subject of magic was his uncompleted THE MAGIC SHOW, recently shown at the Film Forum. He was working on the script of THE MAGIC SHOW in preparation for filming the next day when he died of heart failure.

[blunted by community]

glenn, i had the same feeling about hughes being the original model for welles' first film. i always felt that was the only way to make cotten jive with the plot.

[mteal]

I believe Conrad's book mentions that the Howard Hughes-type character would have been in THE SMILER WITH A KNIFE, a national aviation hero who was plotting a fascist takeover of the U.S.. Of course, he might have been talking about Lindbergh too, sort of the same way Kane was modeled on other tycoons besides Hearst. Cotton had some of the same stoic qualities that could have made a good Linbergh/Hughes composite. But if that's true, I wonder what role Welles himself would have played in the film, or if he would have appeared in it at all.

[Christopher]

I've seen F FOR FAKE a number of times since its release in 1975 -- and each time I've been dazzled by its wit, brilliance and reinvention of the documentary form -- but last night, I saw F FOR FAKE again at the Film Forum's ongoing Welles festival, and it came together for me in a whole new way. I was able to see more clearly that this is Welles's personal essay on the making and meaning of art. He explores the various elements of trickery, magic, fantasy, forgery and confabulation that go into the creation of a work of art, drawing on his own work to illustrate his points. In the incredibly beautiful and moving sequence on the Chartres cathdral, the still center of the film which I could watch every day for the rest of my life, I felt Welles was privately ruminating on his own place in the pantheon, that perhaps the unvoiced preoccupation driving his documentary was, "Am I, Orson Welles, a faker or an artist for the ages?" There is a humility at the heart of this great man that is often missed. And finally, every artist must have his muse, and in F FOR FAKE, the role is gorgeously filled by Welles's own muse, Oja Kodar. Just wanted to share these thoughts with y'all.

[Christopher]

Another thing that struck me forcibly when I revisited F FOR FAKE last night was how new it seems, how fresh, this film made almost thirty years ago, how it is still ahead of its time and overflowing with untapped ideas and techniques for future filmmakers.

[jbrooks]

Christopher,

How was Film Forum's print of "F For Fake"?

Did you stay for "The Immortal Story"? I saw a notation on Film Forum's website saying that that film was being projected digitally.

They had "Filming Othello" in digital projection as well -- and the quality was quite poor.

[Glenn Anders]

Christopher: I think of the Welles films that we have, somewhat in the form he intended, the list should read, in terms of accomplishment: CITIZEN KANE, F FOR FAKE, TOUCH OF EVIL, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT.

The damage done to the rest was catastrophic to their intentions.

Glenn

[Christopher]

jbrooks: The Film Forum's print of FAKE was acceptable, but I have a memory of more vivid color from my previous screenings some years ago -- when New York University's Film School did a Welles retrospective, for instance, in 1989.

I did stay for THE IMMORTAL STORY, and the print I saw had Italian subtitles (which I found a bit annoying because they took up so much space) and, again, my memory was of glorious color -- I believe this was the first film Welles made in color -- and the Film Forum print was far from glorious. However, the film made a wonderfully dreamy contrast with F FOR FAKE, and seemed like a languid fairy-tale being spun by a master storyteller. It had a sort of timeless quality -- the slow pace, the sound of crickets chirping in the night scenes, the recurring Satie piano music -- and of course, Jeanne Moreau is marvelous in it, and so is Welles, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it, which I hadn't expected to, because I was mainly interested in seeing F FOR FAKE again.

There's a revealing quote by Welles on page 105 of "The Unknown Orson Welles" published by the Munich Filmmuseum: "When I finished F FOR FAKE, I thought I had discovered a new kind of movie and it was the kind of movie I wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. And it was the failure of F FOR FAKE in America and also in England that was one of the big shocks of my life. Because I really thought I was onto something. And it's a form, in other words, the essay, the personal essay, as opposed to the documentary, quite different. Not a documentary at all." -- Orson Welles, 1982 This just three years before his death.

[blunted by community]

glenn, i don't think the stranger, macbeth, othello, and the trial had catastrophic damage done to them.

from what i've read welles say, he didn't think othello, or the trial had catastrophic damage either.