What starts as a story about art forgery ends up being a magic trick about truth itself—one that Welles performs on us.
Trailer for “F for Fake”
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- Elmyr de Hory claims dozens of “Picassos” and “Matisses” in major museums were actually painted by him. The experts still haven’t figured it out.
- Clifford Irving, Elmyr’s biographer, pulled off his own hoax by selling a fake “authorized” Howard Hughes autobiography for a six-figure advance.
- Orson Welles admits on camera that he’s a lifelong magician and faker. Then he uses editing sleight-of-hand to fake entire sequences in the film.
- The last 20 minutes of the film—presented as a “true” story about Picasso and Oja Kodar—turn out to be a fabricated story Welles just made up, after swearing to the audience he was done lying.
Watch “F for Fake”
You can stream “F for Fake” on HBO Max or Prime Video.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 90/100
- IMDB Rating: 7.7/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 88/100 (Users); 88/100 (Critics)
Director’s Note: Directed, co-written, and narrated by Orson Welles, this film is part documentary, part hoax, and part cinematic essay. If you liked Welles’s later doc “Filming Othello” (which I rated 94/100), this is its chaotic predecessor, full of tricks and traps.
Release Date: 1973 (France); 1975 (U.S. release)
My Review of “F for Fake”
The Setup
This is a hall of mirrors, kicked off by art forger Elmyr de Hory—who proudly duped museums for decades. Then the doc pivots to his biographer, Clifford Irving, who faked a Howard Hughes memoir. Then it pivots again—to Welles himself, dissecting fraud, illusion, and filmmaking. By the end, you’re no longer watching a doc *about* deception. You’re inside one.
More Highlights from the Doc
- Elmyr paints a “Modigliani” in 30 minutes—and it’s indistinguishable from the real thing.
- Irving’s fake Hughes book fooled McGraw-Hill, netting him a massive advance—and it took Hughes himself (via a bizarre phone press conference) to stop it.
- Welles draws parallels to his own youthful prank—when he faked a Martian invasion with the 1938 “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast.
- The editing is breathless—jump cuts, split screens, looping narration. Welles even splices himself into scenes he never attended, just to prove how easy it is to fake reality.
- Near the end, Welles promises “everything you’re about to see is true” and tells a story about Picasso and a mysterious woman—only to admit later that he made it all up, down to the last frame.
Lesser-Known Details from the Doc
- The original footage of Elmyr was shot by French documentarian François Reichenbach—Welles inherited the reels and restructured them into a completely different story.
- Oja Kodar, Welles’s longtime partner, wasn’t just in front of the camera—she helped shape and re-edit large portions of the film.
- Some scenes that feel like interviews or found footage were fully staged by Welles—including a fake “reveal” in a Paris train station.
- The film constantly references forgery in classical art, but Welles subtly ties it to filmmaking—implying cinema itself is the grand illusion.
- The entire film is edited to fit within Welles’s self-imposed “1 hour of truth” constraint, after which he fully admits he starts lying again.
Wrap Up:
“F for Fake” isn’t just about fakes—it *is* one. It’s the most honest documentary about lying I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc