1973 ‘Vérités et Mensonges’ Directed by Orson Welles
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
Orson Welles Oja Kodar Elmyr de Hory Clifford Irving Laurence Harvey Edith Irving David Walsh Paul Stewart Richard Wilson Joseph Cotten Howard Hughes Richard Drewett Alexander Welles Gary Graver Andrés Vicente Gómez Julio Palinkas Christian Odasso Françoise Widhoff Peter Bogdanovich William Alland Mark Forgy Nina van Pallandt
Truths and Lies, F come falso - Verità e menzogna, ? – About Fakes, F wie Fälschung, Fraude, Фальшивка, Verdades e Mentiras, F de falso, Con F de falso, F jak fałszerstwo, オーソン・ウェルズのフェイク, F de Fraude, B som i bluff, F for fup, Η Αλήθεια και το Ψέμα
Humanity and the world around us artists, biography, musician, songs or emotional documentary, fascinating, sad, emotional or heartbreaking band, songs, concert, musician or lyrics journey, scientific, documentary, humanity or earth political, democracy, documentary, president or propaganda Show All…
I think maybe we – collectively, as a species – need to come to terms with the idea that Orson Welles was the best person ever.
He speaks with import but without arrogance. He's brilliant, he KNOWS he's brilliant, but he behaves as though you're on the same page. He gives you that credit, and not to embarrass you. He's the antithesis of pretension. "I began at the top, and I've been working my way down ever since," he says in this, his final film. That's still a mighty high bar.
Convincing the audience your girlfriend is hot enough to horn-up Picasso into 22 portraits... ultimate flex.
In 1977 when I was living in Orson Welles' garage, he let me watch his personal print of F for Fake. Here is an excerpt from the review I published at the time: img18.imageshack.us/img18/2886/rd1h.jpg
Perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being at a party and getting sucked into a conversation on a subject you’re unfamiliar with but the person speaking is so fascinating that you can’t tear yourself away, and you wouldn’t want to even if you could.
The silver screen. The projector lights up and we tune in. Visuals, sound, and collective communion flow out of the screen like an intense heat wave. These images, these feelings, these ideas; how real are they really? The cinema has always been praised for its spectacular bursts of originality and imagination, carrying the worries, pains, and troubles of the audience away into a clouded fog, a fog that vanishes simultaneously along with the remembrance of reality.
However, what if the fog itself is an illusion, crumbling the very fabric of the cinema into a dusty whiff of salty popcorn? Orson Welles' F for Fake doesn't just tear the concept of deception to shreds, but it also assembles a new form;…
Hannah 70 minutes into this movie leans over and whispers “Don’t think it has escaped my notice that the hour is up”
"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, 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."
Cinema is a con. What is an edit if not a tear in reality? F for Fake is playful, a movie where everything is a trick. It is not a direct documentary, often getting lost and distracted amidst many tangents. However what the film ultimately explores is the value of fakery. The experts, those who seek objectivity, decide what counts as true and what counts as fake, and that determines value. But they can be as wrong as anyone can. Who isn't fake in a world where nobody can know everything? Furthermore, what is an artist who only imitates? Are they not still an artist? Does great art require an artist and an authentic signature?
The lofty questions above are…
Wow...
I thought I'd sleep on this and see if the ideas would flow in the morning, but I still don't totally know what to say about this film, but it blew me away!
Given that it was partially documentary, I was expecting something much slower paced. This movie is tireless! Welles throws stuff at you for 90 minutes and you're juggling 5 or 6 storylines. It's chaotic in the best way possible, and in a way that doesn't show its age.
The editing style is at the core of this, he jumps between different interviews, to make it seem like his subjects are jumping in on each other's points and cutting each other off, when they weren't even in…
orson pausing mid-story to order the steak au poivre proves that everything in this movie is real
