 |
| 1973 |
| 85 minutes |
| Astrophore Films/Janus |
|
Principal Cast: (as themselves, more or less) |
| Orson Welles |
| Oja Kodar |
| Elmyr de Hory |
| Clifford Irving |
| Francois Reichenbach |
| Joseph Cotten |
| Principal Crew: |
| Director: Orson Welles |
| Script: Orson Welles & Oja Kodar |
| Cinematography: Gary Graver, Christian Odasso |
| Editors: Marie-Sophie Dubus, Dominque Engerer |
| Music: Michel Legrand |
| Sound: Paul Bertrault |
| Full Cast and Crew |
F for Fake serves as the final major piece of documentary fiction (or fictionalized documentary) of Welles' career, starting with War of the Worlds. Put together from scraps of footage shot by Francois Reichenbach for a film about de Hory, Welles fashioned the footage, along with his own material, into something that confounds expectations at every turn.
French lobby card. See two more here.
VIDEO
POSTER ART
Some key words from the film:
Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan. Picasso once said he could paint fake Picassos as well as anybody, and someone like Picasso could say something like that and get away with it. But an Elmyr de Hory? Elmyr is a profound embarrassment to the art world. He is a man of talent making monkeys out of those who have disappointed him. This film doesn't exalt the forger. It denounces the art market, because it is elementary, isn't it, that if you don't have the market, then fakers couldn't exist.
And Clifford Irving? He couldn't make it with his fiction, but making a fake made him the best-known writer in the world. Who are the experts? Elmyr de Hory had dramatized the question of whether or not art exists. It has always existed, but today I believe that man cannot escape his destiny to create whatever it is we make- jazz, a wooden spoon, or graffiti on the wall. All of these are expressions of man's creativity, proof that man has not yet been destroyed by technology. But are we making things for the people of our epoch or repeating what has been done before? And finally, is the question itself important? We must ask ourselves that. The most important thing is always to doubt the importance of the question.
-Orson Welles
(thanks to Lawrence French for sending these, as well as the poster art and picture of Welles and Oja Kodar)
Thanks to Kevin Thomas for sending the lobby cards.