Online Viewing: Orson Welles’ F is for Fake

Welles’ ingenious 1974 “documentary” about famous art forger Elmyr de Hory. From New York Review—

…the last two or three minutes after the Kodar digression, and the hour or so before the Kodar scenes, is unadulterated greatness. Welles shifts in and out of reality, mixing archival newsreels, his own snippets filmed all over Europe, and scenes from 1950s UFO films (mostly 1956’s Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers)- playing off his infamous 1938 War Of The Worlds radio broadcast, to toy with his viewers’ minds. The editing in the film is magnificent, as words counterpoint with a succession of images which only show that Welles was the first MTV director, a decade before that abomination of modern culture’s lowest common denominator declension appeared. His cuts sheerly dazzle: from shots of Welles sitting in a park as the seasons change, to haunting images of the cathedral at Chartres, contrasted with Welles’ own sterling prose…

Via Altertube.