Orson Welles’s Purloined Letter: F For Fake
By April 25, 2005
There were plenty of advantages to living in Paris in the early 1970s, especially if one was a movie buff with time on one’s hands. The Parisian film Read more »
- United States
- 1975
- 87 minutes
- Color
- 1.66:1
- English
- Spine #288
SYNOPSIS: Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In Orson Welles’s free-form documentary F for Fake, 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 embarks on a dizzying cinematic journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes—not the least of whom is Welles himself. Charming and inventive, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a searching examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Orson Welles | |
| Oja Kodar | |
| Elmyr de Hory | |
| Clifford Irving | |
| François Reichenbach | |
| Gary Graver | |
| Pablo Picasso? |
Credits
| Director | Orson Welles |
| Written by | Orson Welles and Oja Kodar |
| Photography | Gary Graver |
| Music | Michel Legrand |
| Editing | Marie-Sophie Dubus and Dominique Engerer |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
Audio commentary by star and co-writer Oja Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver - Introduction by director Peter Bogdanovich
- Orson Welles: One-Man Band, an 88-minute documentary from 1995 about Welles’s unfinished projects
- Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery, a 52-minute documentary from 1997 about art forger Elmyr de Hory
- A 2000 60 Minutes interview with Clifford Irving about his Howard Hughes autobiography hoax
- A 1972 Hughes press conference exposing Irving’s hoax
- Extended nine-minute trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
- Plus: A new essay by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
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CITIZEN AND FATHER
November 11, 2009
When one thinks of Orson Welles, one can’t help but imagine a genius alone, monolithic—an image perhaps fostered by his greatest creation, the colossus Citizen Kane. Yet Read more »
