Trailer
F for Fake was not released in the USA until 1976. When it finally came out, Welles produced a preview "trailer" for it, which was effectively a wholly original nine-minute film, shot and edited in a similar style to the film itself. Apart from some very brief split-second camera shots, the entire film is a self-contained short containing original material starring Welles, Gary Graver and Oja Kodar. The trailer raises new questions about key people in the main film: Picasso, Kodar, Elmyr, and others. These allegations are supposedly revealed in the main film. They include a wig, Oja Kodar's fake name, her tiger (not shown in the film at all), and extraterrestrial sponsors of Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast. The trailer has subsequently been restored in colour, and is included as an extra on some DVD versions of the film.[8]
Critical reception
F for Fake faced widespread popular rejection. Critical reaction ranged from praise to confusion and hostility, with many finding the work to be self-indulgent or incoherent. F for Fake has grown somewhat in stature over the years.[9] The film embraces ideas from the self-conscious notation of the film process to the ironic employment of 1950s-era B movie footage (Earth vs. the Flying Saucers). Welles thought he was creating a new form of cinema. When writer Jonathan Rosenbaum asked Welles if he was creating a documentary, he replied: “No, not a documentary—a new kind of film."[10]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 7.79/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "F for Fake playfully poses intriguing questions while proving that even Orson Welles' minor works contain their share of masterful moments."[11] In July 2021, the film was shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.[12]
Questions of truthfulness
Author Robert Anton Wilson, a great fan of the film, argued in Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death that the film was itself largely an intentional effort at fakery by Welles in support of the film's themes. Most directly, Wilson reports that in the BBC documentary Orson Welles: Stories of a Life in Film, Welles stated that "everything in that film was a trick." Secondly, many of the interviews in the film were with people who were themselves directly involved with forgery in one way or another, often making statements that would have been known by the filmmakers to be false, but which were allowed to pass without comment in the film. Similarly, Welles himself made numerous false statements about Oja Kodar in the film. Finally, Wilson points out several scenes which, while presented in a way that implies they were filmed in real time, were upon further inspection clearly fabricated from unrelated pieces of footage in a way guaranteed to mislead the casual viewer. An example of this appears with a series of near-wordless shots of Irving and de Hory seemingly in debate as to whether de Hory ever signed his forgeries; the shots of Irving and de Hory were in fact taken at different times.[13]
Welles's autobiographical asides in the film reflect on his 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds, which he alleges caused a nationwide panic with its fake news broadcast. In introducing this chapter of his life, Welles declares his uncertainty as to his own authenticity, as he believes he too has engaged in fraud. While the basic facts of The War of the Worlds incident are correctly given, the apparent excerpts from the play featured in the movie are fabrications, including a scene in which President Roosevelt meets the Martian invaders—something which did not happen in the original broadcast.
Home media releases
- 1995 Home Vision Cinema, Janus Films VHS (FAK 010), 25 July 1995[14]
- 1995 The Criterion Collection, Laserdisc (Spine #260), 27 July 1995 – Single disc edition, with the special feature of the Theatrical Trailer contained after the film
- 2005 The Criterion Collection, Region 1 DVD (Spine #288), 26 April 2005 – Two-disc special edition including audio commentary by Oja Kodar and Gary Graver, an introduction by Peter Bogdanovich, and the documentary Orson Welles: One-Man Band (1995)[15]
- 2009 Madman Entertainment Directors Suite, Region 4 DVD, 20 May 2009 – Special features include audio commentary by Adrian Martin, Monash University, and the documentary Orson Welles: One-Man Band (1995)[16]
- 2010 Eureka Video: Masters of Cinema, Region 2 DVD (Spine #31) – Special features include audio commentary by cinematographer Gary Graver and Bill Krohn, and Jonathan Rosenbaum on F For Fake[17]
