# Vérités et mensonges (1975)

### reviewed by
Shane Burridge

    F for Fake (1975) 88m

Playful documentary by Orson Welles may make your head spin, especially the chop-and-switch of the first ten minutes. Thoroughly hermeneutic work is quintessential Welles even more than any of his fictional features, showing us Welles the actor, Welles the raconteur, Welles the parlor-magician, and Welles the film-maker, who blends his subject (art forgery) into the business of film fakery with a devilish sleight of hand.

Film's hall-of-mirrors approach has danger of becoming irritating after a while, but Welles guides us through its strange events with confidence. Most of it is concerned with art forger Elmyr de Hory, who quietly circulated fake 'unknown' works of artists from his home in Ibeza. Once uncovered he became the subject of attention by writer Clifford Irving....who then upstaged him by himself becoming the perpetrator of a hoax upon producing a fake biography of Howard Hughes. Hughes gives a telephone interview stating that he's never heard of Irving - but there is no guarantee that it is really Hughes giving the interview. Meanwhile, Hory suspects that Irving has stashed some of his forged paintings for future sales; others think that the handwritten Hughes documents were forged for Irving by Hory; there is even speculation that Hory isn't a real fake, but a fake fake, and that the so-called 'forged' artworks are real paintings. Get the idea? Welles revels in the duplicity of his subject, reminding us time and time again that we can't trust the medium of film either (remember, this is the individual who pulled off the biggest media hoax in history with his famous 'War of the Worlds' broadcast).

Film takes a break from the machinations of its tricky story after an hour while Welles talks of the events that led him to Hollywood to make CITIZEN KANE (which at first was going to be based not on Randolph William Hearst but....Howard Hughes!), then spends the last twenty minutes of the film recounting an anecdote about Picasso. At first it seems that this has been included into the documentary because the Hory/Irving/Hughes material couldn't be stretched any further - but keep watching: Welles isn't through with that idea yet. It's a delight seeing him playing to the camera, sitting at a restaurant with friends, laughing while interviewing a gallery owner, studying footage through a moviola, and entertaining a youngster with conjuring tricks. As Welles prefers not to discuss his films in interviews it's the closest peek into his mind we're likely to get.

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