F for Fake - Criterion Collection
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Actor: Gary Graver, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Joseph Cotten, Peter Bogdanovich, William AllandBrand: Image Entertainment
Primary Contributor: Oja Kodar
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 85 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-04-26
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion
DVD Reviews of F for Fake - Criterion Collection
DVD Review: a thesis on the fake
Summary: 3 Stars
Not much to say about this film. Treat it as a part documentary forgery/bootleg concepts and exposition into fakery. Wells did not know that at the start of filming that Irving would forge a book about Hughes. We also get to see the events that caused Elmyr de Hory to commit suicide a few years later after he learned that France would no longer protect him from Spanish prosecutors. Certain people cannot be caged he choose freedom in the purest sensed death. But I digress. Also Wells takes his own stab at forgery with a small skit about Picasso and an old forger. What is "fake" anyways? And what is its relationship to the world? This is what Wells want the viewer to think about. A must watch for Wells fans and those interested in art and hooliganism. The highlight of the film is a wordless montage (filmed at different place and time) between De Hory and Irving about De Hory signing the bootlegs he did, thereby making them "authentic" pieces. This kind of editing is common place now but as usual Wells was ahead of his time.
Personally, I would like to find a film that is an antithesis to it, one about ownership and perhaps intellectual rights, creating an Aristotelian synthesis. But that's just me, every ying has a yang.
DVD Review: F is for FUN
Summary: 5 Stars
Orson Welles has a ball examining the nature of what is real and what is fake in the funny, bizarre F FOR FAKE.
If you think Micheal Moore is on target with his work, this one is older and still is a bullseye! This film is an essay that Welles lovingly shares with his film audience, just like Moore does today.
Four people stand at the center of this documentary: Elmyr de Hory, who some believe forged more than a thousand art masterpieces, many of which hang in some of the world's most famous museums; Clifford Irving, who is not only out to prove what a fake Elmyr is but also wrote a fake biography of Howard Hughes; Oja Kodar (who was also Welles's Girlfriend), who claims that Pablo Picasso painted 22 canvases of her that no one has ever seen; and Welles himself, who harks back to his days creating the havoc-causing THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.
The film master stroke is in the editing; from absurd stock footage to shots of Welles smirking into the camera from different locations to scenes with a monkey scurrying about, the film is vastly entertaining to watch.
F FOR FAKE is an underrated, underappreciated work of comic genius about the nature of reality, celebrity, and art, by a master showman showing a surprisingly wicked sense of humor. Like a good magician, he makes us want more and more
Welles has been a maverick filmmaker and it shows. Listen to the commentary track on this film, you will see either Welles the genius filmmaker or the madman...take your pick. I pick Genius and I am sticking to it!
Bennet Pomerantz AUDIOWORLD
DVD Review: Masterful
Summary: 4 Stars
One of the greatest pieces of charlatanry in Orson Welles' brilliant pseudo-documentary F For Fake, released in 1974, is the idea that Welles' lover and one time sculptress, Oja Kodar (n?e Olga Palinkas), had any real hand in crafting the film; specifically in writing it alongside Welles. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against the woman nor the claim, for the claim is in keeping with the whole tenor of the film, and when she was young, well, the lovely Ms. Kodar looked positively ferocious in a bikini. But if her film commentary is to be a standard for judging her intellect and artistic merit, well, bravo Ms. Kodar for pushing the film's use of deceit even further. After all, Welles has been dead for well over two decades, so he can no more debunk your insipid claims than, say, journeyman filmmaker Carol Reed can deny the manifest: that it was Welles, not himself- as a mere beard for the blacklisted Welles, who directed Welles' brilliant film, The Third Man, back in 1949.
Of course, I have erred in even calling F For Fake a `pseudo-documentary'. In a sense, its closest cousin was the kitschy old 1970s television `documentary' series In Search Of....With Leonard Nimoy, wherein Star Trek's once and future Mr. Spock would explore the `scientific verities' of such things as the Bermuda Triangle, ghosts, and Judge Crater's disappearance. Welles' last finished and distributed film is really a filmic treatise on art and truth, and, given Welles' voluminous intellect and dazzling talent, it's a near-masterpiece, and very close to being the `new kind of film' that Welles claimed it was. Of course, its closest antecedent would not be in film but in the supposed `nonfiction' literary works of Truman Capote (In Cold Blood) and Marcel Proust (Remembrance Of Things Past).... F For Fake, though, is the genuine article- a terrific work of cinema by a master of the art form. It makes fools of the benighted critics who damned it when it opened, merely using it as a grindstone for their anti-Welles axes, and shows that Orson Welles was not a `failed' Hollywood director, but a brilliantly inventive and successful independent director, one whose final completed and edited work showed how the reality of the unreal was a growing force in modern life, and left it up to the viewer how to deal with that fact. The real surprise would have been had it been hailed as the herald it is, both as a work of cultural criticism and a work of art so far ahead of its day that even now, nearly four decades after it was conceived and begun, it still may be more aptly called a work of prophecy than documentary. Thus, it is one of the few films, or works of art, that I can recommend not only for its art, but for its cultural and sociological import. See it, think about it, and let it soak in. But don't be embarrassed if you find that you've soiled yourself in the morning dreaming of Ms. Kodar. After all, there is a very good reason Welles has her beauteous form in the film, and you know that you're only lying to yourself if you deny it. See what a mere work of art can really do?
DVD Review: F for feat!
Summary: 5 Stars
The first sequence if the film shows us one the most alluring women ever existed: Oja Kodar, and through these traveling, the eye-camera invites us to participate with Welles through a particular journey: the fake.
The inextinguishable genius of Orson Welles is carved once more in relief through this admirable of two well known fakers , Elmyr and Irving. As it's well know, Elmyr was regarded the most astute, fine and intelligent artist of the falsification, his immense skills as painter allowed him to copy Modigliani, Matisse or the same Picasso, his reproductions were bought for many art dealers; on the other hand, Irving is closely linked with Howard Hughes.
Orson Welles acts as the master of ceremonies, his voice in off and some other important reflections about himself and so other issues.
The movie is deeply absorbing and engaging, but the rest of its charm runs for you; it would be a crime to tell you the rest of this original masterwork.
DVD Review: A Cinematic Juggling Act
Summary: 4 Stars
His last major work as a filmmaker, Orson Welles' "F for Fake" (1973) survives as a rough-edged yet provocative essay on the art of fraud. In this instance, we have three noted subjects: art forger extraordinaire Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving (the novelist who conned the world as Howard Hughes' "authorized biographer") and Welles himself. Editing plays a vital role as the Great Orson maintains his semi-documentary juggling act for 90 minutes. Fittingly enough, "F for Fake" reveals more about the creator of "Citizen Kane" than the minor curiosities he examines. Welles ends his cinematic odyssey with an affectionate wink.
Description of F for Fake - Criterion Collection
Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In Orson Welles' free-form documentary, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully engages the central preoccupation of his career-the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles goes on a dizzying cinematic journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes-not the least of which is Welles himself. Charming and poignant, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a searching examination of the essential duplicity of cinema. Criterion's two-disc DVD edition also features an introduction by Peter Bogdanovich, audio commentary by director of photography Gary Graver, an hour long documentary on Welles' unfinished projects, a documentary on the life and works of de Hory, and the theatrical trailer.To call Orson Welles's F For Fake a documentary would be somewhat deceitful, but deceit itself is very much the subject of this curious film essay. Welles ruminates on the nature of artistic fakery through two examples, that of infamous art forger Elmyr de Hory and the writer Clifford Irving, whose bogus autobiography of Howard Hughes set off a minor media flurry in the 1970s. Postmodernist that he is, Wells then proceeds to narrate and edit the film in such a perversely frenetic way as to blur the lines between what is real and what is deception, making for an often confusing but engaging work of art in itself. We even see the footage we've been watching as it's being spliced together in Welles's editing room. The specter of Welles's often maligned later career hangs over the proceedings like a challenge--is he going to actually complete this strange movie about chicanery, or will it become one of the many unfinished experiments of his twilight years? Happily, Welles concludes the proceedings with a delightful sequence about Picasso, lust, and what constitutes real art. F For Fake is a fine example of a master filmmaker who had at least a couple tricks left up his sleeve. --Ryan Boudinot
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