F For Fake (1973)

F For Fake (NR)

"O for Overrated"

Legendary Director Orson Welle's (Citizen Kane) last completed film is a strange commentary on trickery, fakery and the arts.  Cut together from various sources, this semi-documentary zips back and forth between the stories of famed art-forger Elmyr, his hoax ridden biographer Clifford Irving, the supposed voice of tycoon and recluse Howard Hughes, Welle's young vivacious girlfriend and the man himself speaking about his past of treachery vis a vie his infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast.

Spliced together in a very nontraditional style that skews close to French New Wave collage, the film was met with hostility upon release.  However if the construction proves distracting, the film's content and real life characters are fascinating with hindsight.  Filmed when these men were just being outed as con-men, and with Welle's own personal touch of conspiratorial confession to boot, F for Fake is a strange yet effective rumination on the dual nature of art and forgery, magicians and scam artists, fact and fiction.  The editing jumps off the cogs often, sometimes revealing the men filming the scenes themselves, breaking the then taboo 4th wall and taking all suspension of disbelief with it, evoking a kind of "alakazam" of a twist ending that was probably half the reason Welle's and his lady dreamed up this experiment.  Perhaps not a full fledged film, but shouldn't be viewed as such, F For Fake was an easy forrunner of Banksy's Exit Through The Gift Shop, two sides of a coin, a coin that pays for art is also that which ruins art.

5.5 70s "Look at my hot European Girlfriend in my film" Sexism out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)