F is for Fake

[Terry]

Fake has been my favorite Welles film for some time, which is surprising since my first words to Ray Kelly after my initial viewing 100 years ago were "what the hell kind of movie is this, anyway?" It's a delight and I love it, though my attention does waver during the Chartres sequence everyone else seems to adore.

The earliest color footage I've ever seen or heard of by Welles was from the Carnival and Jangadeiros sequences in It's All True, clips of which appear in the excellent associated documentary. And didn't Welles answer "guilty as charged" to PB's query that he had directed his own scenes in David e Goliath? Those were in color. And I don't know which came first of these three, The Immortal Story, The Deep, or Orson's Bag, but those were all color as well.

And regarding completed projects, I include The Orson Welles Show and Filming Othello in that oeuvre, both of which postdate Fake.

Sigh, and what was this "Conversations with Roger Hill" thing that was shown at Locarno? I'd not heard of it until reading What Ever Happened to Orson Welles this evening.

Will our boys in Munich ever release their frankly superb reconstructions commercially, or is that derailed on the B & O Railroad as well?

Terry

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, Christopher, for the praise. As you do, as many do here, I find F FOR FAKE a dazzlingly brilliant film.

I plead guilty to you and Roger Ryan, not to mention Terry (above), that I erred in calling F FOR FAKE, Welles' first color film. I guess the tape copy of THE IMORTAL STORY that my old friend BAMBO-BAMBO Christianson made for me is so desaturated in color that I don't readily think of it as being in color. But of course, it is.

Terry, you are quite right about F FOR FAKE's late entry into Welles' color oeuvre, as I confess, but most of the other films you mention were either never finished, meant as inserts in larger films, murkily credited to others, or finished by different hands.

Stefan Droessler and his restorers have been quietly working on a mountain of Welles material for better than a decade. Every so often, they release a portion through one venue or another: "London," FILMING THE TRIAL, MOBY DICK, "The Golden Honeymoon," etc.

Stefan showed "A Conversation with Roger Hill," a small part of a much greater amount of footage, to Todd Baesen, Larry French and me on his visit to San Francisco before the most recent one. The documentary is a warm, relaxed kind of home movie, taken at the Hills' retirement estate in the Southwest (Sedona, Arizona). Welles and Hill, obviously old friends catching up, sit on what looks (in my memory) like a sun-porch overlooking a river. They reminisce about their time together at Todd School and other subjects, while Hortense Hill straightens them out occasionally, and keeps their coffee cups filled. It is a very nice work, showing Welles, as he so rarely allowed, being away from his public persona.

Glenn

[Terry]

The Roger Hill stuff sounds wonderful.

I hope I may see it someday, without having to travel to the West Coast, East Coast, or transatlantically for a one-off showing.


Terry

[Glenn Anders]

Hi, Terry: I'd like to have a copy of that one myself.

I'm sure Stefan Droessler welcomes commercial DVD releases for his projects.

Send a few quid as a donation to the Munich Film Museum. It might stimulate another DVD being put on the market.

Regards.

Glenn

[Christopher]

This mistake has cropped up again and again in connection with the footage entitled "A Conversation with Roger Hill." After Roger sold Todd School, he and Hortense Hill retired to Coral Gables, Florida, where they spent a number of years until Hortense's ill health forced them to move north again, to Rockford, Illinois, where several members of their family lived, and here they both remained until their deaths. The Hills never lived in or had a retirement home in Sedona, Arizona. However, Welles had a home in Arizona before he moved his family to Las Vegas, and it was probably in his Arizona home that "A Conversation with Roger Hill" was filmed.

[Glenn Anders]

My apologies for that error, Christopher. I fear that I am the source of the spreading error. At the time, I did find it odd that a river would be running through the Hills' property in Arizona. Perhaps, it was just the strong impression I got that the Hills were the hosts for Welles, not the other way aboout. No matter, I stand corrected. Colonial papers, please copy.

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

Had a chance to see this on the big screen a couple of weeks ago, as part of a morning Welles film series. It was the only one of the series I was able to catch, but it was nice to see about 200 people in the audience, so the series probably did OK. The print was a little beat up in spots, and they had it framed slightly wrong, but it still looked terrific on the big screen as all of Welles's movies do.

"In attempting to explain F For Fake’s state-side failure, it has occurred to me that perhaps the subject matter was at least partially to blame, and that this country is so blissfully enslaved by the notion of the special sanctity of the expert that an overtly anti-expert film was bound to go too much against the national grain."
—Orson Welles, 1983

[Colmena]

Just watched "F for Fake," my second time. I must confess that I do not "get it," yet. I liked it, kinda, and appreciate how odd it is, as a essay, but it does not come across as the masterwork that many Wellesians claim. I hope that I will, but it hasn't happened yet.

For me, the biggest problem is all that "girl watching" footage at the beginning. Why is it there? Yes, it sets up the theme of voyeurism that re-appears in the tale of Picasso and the Picassos. But why does it go on so long? What does girl-watching have to do with the themes of fakery, honesty, etc. Any comments on that?

In the commentary there two nice points made by Oja. That OW had a "Rosebud" in him, by which she meant, I believe, hidden secret(s) that even she was not able to witness.

And that he liked accidents on set, since these were "fun" challenges to his genius.
(I'm putting fun in quotes; it refers back to "I think it would be fun to run a newspaper...")

[GlennandersFraser]

Colmena: You draw me back from the dead.

Part of any true work of Art is in its observers' discoveries.

My interpretation for what the shape of F FOR FAKE reveals is that inspiration and obsession are often symbiotic and universal. All the paparazzi on the track of Oja Kodar are linked to Pablo Picasso and Orson Welles himself, indeed, to all the "singers" who create rather than destroy. One may quarrel with that observation by noting that Welles goes against the present grain by suggesting that most successful artists are men; he opens himself to charges of a certain sexism that it amuses him to also attribute to his genius contemporary, Picasso. He was not above displaying muted jealousy, which early in his career prompted him to ignore "influences," or to be enigmatic about them. As he grew older, the humor of those early judgments tended sometimes to be more specific and bitter, as we can see in Peter Biskind's edit of Henry Jaglom's My Lunches with Orson.

As to your last question, Welles and several of his director friends (like John Huston) said [I paraphrase] that great directors "preside over happy accidents." It is in the genius of a great director (and other creative artists) to recognize such "accidents" and make use of them in a finished artistic product.

All the best.

Glenn

[Colmena]

Thanks for the reply, Glenn, as always.

Thinking about all that initial "girl-watching" material... it reminds me of the Salammbo scene in CK where we suddenly see Susan's exposed leg, strutting across the stage... and then there's a cut to a bunch of mature gentlemen men up in their box, oggling this exposure. Kane is showing off his sexy woman, to the male gaze. (N.B., This is Susan's version of the Opera, not Leland's.)

Just as Welles does with Oja. (Tho that was her footage, right? And he then decides to begin F for Fake with it.)

[Wellesnet]

Nice 5-minute video essay on F For Fake:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/ ... e-20150402

http://www.teemingbrain.com/2013/05/09/ ... existence/

“And this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps in the whole Western world, and it’s without a signature: Chartres. A celebration to God’s glory and to the dignity of man. All that’s left, most artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked radish. There aren’t any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe which is disposable. You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things, this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand, choiring shout of affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust, to stand intact, to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish.

“Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life. We’re going to die. ‘Be of good heart,’ cry the dead artists out of the living past. Our songs will all be silenced — but what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.”

— Orson Welles, F Is For Fake

Mike Davis: "I’m not sure any scientist would describe the universe as “disposable”. The universe is an amazing, beautiful place, full of wonders. If there’s no god, that doesn’t change that.

I wonder about people who need a god in order to see the beauty in life. Mr Welles was wrong; there ARE celebrations. Every day, the wise celebrate life and the wonder of it."

[tadao]

F For Fake was covered as part of an episode of the Free Thinking programme on BBC Radio 3 last week. The Fake segment begins around 16 minutes into the show and is chiefly a precis of the film between the host and two critics, lasting some 12 minutes; it won't exactly break news to anyone here but might inspire a listener or two to seek out a DVD or a screening. It's warm and affectionate anyway, and the remainder of the programme also held my interest, on the subjects of con artists and the alchemist John Dee.

The episode's page is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06xy9w6, and a podcast version is slated to be available indefinitely at
http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/http/vpid/p03gp8gd.mp3

[Gordon]

"Everything I know About Editing I learned from this Film"

from "Every Frame A Painting"

"F for Fake (1973) - How to Structure a Video Essay"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXv2C7vwX0