Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

F for Fake (1975)

Director: Orson Welles

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A triumphantly self-amused, self-aware reflection on the verities of art and creativity and the lies that sustain them, Welles' quizzical homage to forgery and illusionism is both a self-portrait and a wry refutation of the auteur principle, a labyrinthine play of paradoxes and ironies that comes off as the cinematic equivalent of an Escher painting. Starting with some 'found' footage of art forger Elmyr de Hory shot by documentarist François Reichenbach, Welles manipulates it into a mock inquisition on the mysteries of authorship, autonomy, attribution and associative editing, arriving back at Kane and the War of the Worlds broadcast via Howard Hughes and his hoax biographer Clifford Irving. Alongside the films of Jacques Rivette, the epitome of cinema-as-play.

Author: PT 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Orson Welles

Producer: Dominique Antoine, François Reichenbach

Cast: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving, Edith Irving, François Reichenbach, Joseph Cotten, Laurence Harvey, Richard Wilson full cast

Genre(s): Documentaries

Duration: 85 mins

Related articles


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.