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The final directorial project the legendary Orson Welles completed during his lifetime, F for Fake is less a documentary than an example of cinematic free association on the topic of trickery. Much of the film is in fact drawn from other sources, most notably an unfinished documentary by Francois Reichenbach on the notorious Elmyr de Hory, whose extremely skillful forgeries of famous paintings caused scandals amongst art collectors and experts. In an additional bit of irony, de Hory's interviewer is author Clifford Irving, who became infamous due to a forgery of his own: a falsified autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles openly re-edits and manipulates this footage, using it as a spine for his own commentary, arguing that there is an extremely close relationship between art and lying, and citing instances from his own career to prove the point. Through a combination of documentary and staged footage, Welles attempts to illustrate the artifice behind all filmmaking, even that of a supposedly non-fiction variety.
Product Details
Actors: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Joseph Cotton
Directors: Orson Welles
Format: Multiple Formats, Blu-ray, Widescreen
Language: English
Region: Region A/1 (Read more about DVD/Blu-ray formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Number of discs: 1
Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion Collection (Direct)
DVD Release Date: October 21, 2014
Run Time: 87 minutes
Special Features
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New, restored digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Audio commentary from 2005 by cowriter and star Oja Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver
Introduction from 2005 by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
Orson Welles: One-Man Band, a documentary from 1995 about Welles’s unfinished projects
Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery, a fifty-two-minute documentary from 1997 about art forger Elmyr de Hory
60 Minutes interview from 2000 with Clifford Irving about his Howard Hughes autobiography hoax
Hughes’s 1972 press conference exposing Irving’s hoax
Extended, nine-minute trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
Cast & Crew
Orson Welles Participant
Oja Kodar Participant
Joseph Cotten Participant
François Reichenbach Participant
Paul Stewart Special Participant
Gary Graver Voice Only
Peter Bogdanovich Voice Only
William Alland Voice Only
Technical Credits
Orson Welles Director, Screenwriter
Paul Bertault Sound/Sound Designer
Marie-Sophie Dubus Editor
Gary Graver Cinematographer
Michel Legrand Score Composer
Christian Odasso Cinematographer
François Reichenbach Producer
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