Let’s Get Real

F for Fake was an interesting film that makes the viewers think about themselves and society. The film talks about numerous personalities throughout its 89 minute run time, which goes to show how fast paced the film was, such as de Hory, Irving, Welles, Hughes and Kodar, but the person that caught my attention while viewing the film was the art forger, Elmyr de Hory. Elmyr is a famous, or maybe a more fitting description would be infamous, personality in the art world because of how many famous paintings he has copied or forged and sold to different art connoisseurs and even museums. The story of Elmyr and the art world piqued my interest because it made me reflect on different things such as how do we know when something is real and fake. In the film, Welles acts as sort of the narrator during the whole thing, and he is also the one that presents the audience with numerous deep questions about art, life, society, and many more. One of the questions that Welles brings up is how the art dealers were buying forged or fake art works when they are supposed to be the experts on this. This question is just one of many that resonated with me and made me think about how these were questions that are so simple, yet no one really brings them up. How the film was able to bring up really simple yet still very profound and meaningful questions about different things in people’s lives is what I think made me appreciate the movie a lot. All in all, I thought that the movie F for Fake was a very effective commentary not just on the art world, but in our society as a whole. The movie analyzed and questioned why certain things happen in our life and how it affects how we understand the world we live in. Although I would most probably not watch this film again because of how a big chunk of the film is just listening to someone talk without anything exciting or eye-catching happening, I still think that it is an interesting film especially for people who are into deep, philosophical type of questions. I think after watching this film, it would be impossible not to question your personal beliefs about certain topics because it brings to light a lot of different perspectives that most people do not take into account because there is a public norm or belief that is already established within society. Questioning what we know is not a bad thing at all because in order to grow as people, we must question everything around us in order to better understand the world we live in. If a film with a premise that is as simple as this can leave the audience reflecting on their lives and how the world they live in works, then I think everyone should watch this film at least once in their lifetime. They will surely not regret it even one bit.

F for Face Value

Written by Emerson Enriquez 170819

Throughout the duration of this class, I’ve gotten to expand my taste when it comes to any work of cinema. Having seen such a wide array of films, my appreciation for different genres and means of storytelling has grown. Needles to say, the selection I’ve been to exposed to in this elective was nothing similar to the slapstick comedies and mainstream rom-coms I’m used to. We’ve become accustomed to plot twist after plot twist, one grotesque fictional element following the next. Getting to view a documentary-drama such as “F for Fake” then came as some sort of surprise at first since one could assume that the events depicted would all be based on fact, with nothing about them “made up”. In short, it’s expected that a documentary should have no fake elements; yet in some almost “meta” way, that was the whole point of Welles’ work.

From the get-go, Orson Welles, the film’s narrator and director, depicts himself as an illusionist performing tricks in front of a kid. He narrates the happenings in the life of art forger extraordinaire Elmyr de Hory, whose mimeographs go on to be sold as if they were the original pieces. Clifford Irving serves as de Hory’s critic, yet he himself is convicted of some forgery as the biography he wrote about de Hory turned out to be a Howard Hughes rehash. Welles touches on the fact that the art dealers and buyers of de Hory’s works of deceit are also “fakers” to an extent; continuing to purchase the counterfeit works despite their awareness about it shows how the genuineness of a piece can be so easily pushed aside. The entire scandal about the forgeries touched on the importance of authentication (or perhaps, the lack thereof ) when it comes to artistic works.

“The pompous word for ‘lie’ is ‘art'”

The overall beauty and “looked-at-ness” of art is described to be an arbitrary thing. Welles expounds that most of the art dealers involved in promoting de Hory’s counterfeits were more concerned with how real the piece looks, rather than how real the piece actually is. This comes from their main goal which is to sell the art, and profit. Face value is the most vital, and seemingly, the only factor looked for in the pieces. Demand for artworks toppled appreciation for the authenticity of these. The film coins that the forgery de Hory practices is, in itself, is actually an artwork about the art piece he’s mimicking.

Fakeness comes either as “good” or “bad” depending on it’s quality and how believable it is. It’s an illusion. The point of illusions, of course, is to enchant a target into believing that something that isn’t there, is actually present. In the case of the documentary, it was spotlighted on the originality of Picasso’s and Matisse’s. Although, and quite unexpectedly for me, another slightly profound layer of dimension was added to Welles’ narration, this time in terms of the structure of the docu-drama itself. At the end where the whole story of Kodar, her grandfather and Picasso was demonstrated, the narrator of the whole 88-minutes admitted to lying to or deceiving the audience. At the beginning, he promised that all that will be shared for the coming hour will all be true, yet perhaps as a viewer, time wasn’t really thought about that intently that it came as a dumbfounding moment when Welles revealed that he’d been bluffing for the last 18 minutes or so about Kodar. I never would’ve expected a “plot twist” of sorts to occur in a documentary. The realness of the whole film itself then came up fore questioning as well, similarly to the decoys de Hory paints.

What the fake paintings in the film and the film itself had in common was that they were looked at with face value. Perhaps for the trained artists and viewer alike, it would’ve been possible to see through the bluffs present in both works. While the film was still a documentary, and therefore, still partially factual, it still comes off as “fictional” in some aspects. Both of the two are forms of art still. Art, as described by Welles, is a lie that makes us, or rather, directs us to see the truth. When one focuses on viewing something solely on face value, that person is hindering him or herself from grabbing the essence and authenticity of that thing. Nowadays, how important or recognized is the authenticity of certain things, “art” or not? The way I see it, things will always come off as “real” as they can when we, the viewer, simply succumbs to accepting it as such. For any one person, any “real thing” can be an illusion, and vice versa.

f for fake

F for Fake (1973) is a one of a kind masterpiece made by Orson Welles – an all time cinematic favorite. It is a docudrama co-written, directed by, and starring the man himself. This is a film that features different genres, but in the end considered a film essay – a movie that integrates documentary filmmaking style. Although there is an obvious plot involved, F for Fake revolves around Welles’ way of storytelling. Without him, this movie would not have made as much sense or even been highly acclaimed.

F for Fake features a professional art forger named Elmyr de Hory who recounts his career as the film progresses. It also discusses the authenticity of art. Although F for Fake revolves around the world of art and magic, it mostly lives up exactly to its name – fake.

Besides Elmyr’s story, Orson Welles’ narrates his own story along with hoax biographer Clifford Irving, Howard Hughes, Welles’ companion Oja Kodar, and the movie itself. All in all, there were six stories in parallel with each other, making up one grand documentary. Because all stories were connected and depended on one another, Welles was able to narrate the film, while jumping from different plots, without losing his audience. Also, the structure of the film is similar to one of a magic show. Just like a magic show, F for Fake has its own tricks up its sleeves – surprises, interviews with real forgers, and different event recreations.

Welles focused more on connecting scenes rather than thoughts. This is why each character and storyline understanding were both important in the film. One of my favorite scenes was the film’s introduction. It not only warned viewers of what they were about to watch, but also acknowledged how self-aware the film is about lies, fraud, and facts.

Ladies and gentleman, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery and fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. No, this is a promise. During the next hour, everything you’ll hear from us is really true and based on solid facts.
Orson Welles

One of the film’s most emotional scenes, that still holds true to this day, is when Orson Welles is faced with Chartes Cathedral – “a celebration to God’s glory and to the dignity of man”. He talks about how man makes all these grand objects which will serve as a testimony for all mankind’s accomplishments when humanity passes away – “to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish”. However, after a few decades, these objects will fade away just like mankind – no matter if triumph, failure, fraud, or fake. Despite this thought, we must still go on creating wonderful things.

In the end, I do not think I would watch F for Fake again, but I do agree this film changed film in itself. It was able to give audience members a glimpse of how the structure of a film essay should go and shaped Orson Welles’ legacy as well.

What is Reality?

” Ladies and gentleman, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery and fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. No, this is a promise. During the next hour, everything you’ll hear from us is really true and based on solid facts.
Orson Welles

F for Fake is a 1973 docudrama film that focuses on Elmyr de Hory’s accounts of his career as a professional art forger. His story serves as the backdrop for a fast-paced investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art.

The film opens with Welles performing magic tricks for some children while Kodar watches nearby. Welles quotes Robert-Houdin and says that a magician is just an actor. Welles promises that for the next hour everything in the film will be based on solid fact. Welles then continues to narrate different stories throughout the entire film. In the end, Welles confesses that he had promised everything in the “next hour” was true, and that hour had already passed. He admits that the stories that he narrated after that hour were all lies. He apologizes, quotes Picasso’s statement that art is a lie that makes us see the truth, and bids the audience farewell.

The film was incomprehensible, yet quite profound. It’s a multilayered film with numerous stories all happening at once. It was executed in the form of vignette or montage. All the different narratives are interlocked and combined together to create a sort of platform about counterfeit art, forging, and the question of what art really is, and whether it can have any value at all if it can be reproduced. For all its quirks aside, it’s a richly personal work. The film is breathlessly frenzied montage of differing sources that create the overall film.

Overall, F For Fake is a very interesting film that teaches its viewers about counterfeit art, and fakes and forgeries throughout the ages, and how these are related to the experience of creating and interacting with art. The film Explores the issue of fakes through a number of different characters. There were some key innovative scenes that stand out from the rest. F For Fakeis a very unique viewing experience, Orson Welles consistently ropes in the audience and makes them feel like they are part of the documentary.

Fakery’s layers

Coming from Lost Highway (1997), I was more engaged in the story of F for Fake (1973) because it dealt with how the concepts of expertise, fakery, and credibility could be constructed and questioned. Like Lost Highway, this movie dealt with multiple perspectives. Though narrated through the voice of one, there were multiple stories intertwined to form one story. The different subjects of the documentary were able to explain their side of the situation and how they pulled off their trickery. Another similarity I saw with Lost Highway would be how the concepts were both very existential in nature. It forced the audience to question the truth — what is real and what isn’t?

Because of the nature of this class and how badly the movies we’ve watched messed with our minds about reality and film, I had a lot of trust issues coming into this movie. I did not know if the people in the videos were actors or if they were the actual people the narrator said they were. I link my apprehensions about this movie to how the narrator was a real and visible character. He came off as too much of a fictional character rather than an objective narrator. It also mixed fictional scenes with clips from actual interviews, so it was hard to draw the line between what was nonfiction and fiction. Despite all of this, the reveal towards the end of the movie still got me by surprise. It was the perfect way to end a documentary about trickery and fakery; it left me rethinking about art and art as both an industry and a market. I did appreciate the art market for how it worked despite its tendency to be extremely pretentious, but with this documentary’s exploration of art forgery, my respect lessened.

Another aspect of the film that I particularly loved was its format. It reminded me of the documentaries that the Neistat brothers used to put together in the early 2000s following a similar style of cinematography and quality. It seemed like amateur (handheld and borderline home-video style) filmmaking which gave the movie a more personal touch. The freeze frames were the absolute best, and I think it was a mark of the times as well, so it was interesting to see the progression in documentary cinematography over time.

In the class discussion, it was raised how Orson Welles was hired to edit all this footage to fit a documentary format, but over time, the story morphed into something other than the documentary it was supposed to be — it also became a demonstration of the exact concept it was talking about. This then reminded me of Beastmode, A Social Experiment (2018) and how documentaries have this tendency to evolve over time together with its subjects and creators. Unlike movies with a relatively set start, middle, and end, documentaries are more prone to change because it tackles real-life stories that can develop any other way during its production. For the case of Beastmode, the political climate changed over time, and the writers adapted to that change and found a way to intertwine the storyline of the documentary’s original stars Baron Geisler and Kiko Matos with the Duterte administration. Upon doing more research about Welles’ documentary, I found out that Irving took on a bigger role in the documentary than what was initially intended. It was only during production when people found out that Clifford Irving’s biography of Howard Hughes was forged. This simply added even more layers to the narrative. Naturally, Welles didn’t want to stop there, so he decided to add another layer of his own by adding in a fake story at the latter part of the movie.

This whole experience of watching F for Fake simply made me fall in love with the documentary format again. I lost touch with it recently due to lack of time, but I’m glad to have rediscovered that love I thought I already lost. Documentaries are something I’ve always wanted to make, and seeing this movie has done nothing but push me to pursue this kind of career in the future. Though not completely nonfictional, there’s still something very special about the rawness of documentaries and its subjects. A movie that stimulates the minds of audiences while watching it and creators while making it will always be a great one, and this was nothing short of that.