F for Fake Movie Download

7 / 10

“A little bit of luck, and a dash of larceny.”
In a perfect metaphor for what transpires today in the realm of ‘fake news’, I caught this Orson Welles picture the other day, intrigued by the title but having no idea what it was about. Welles himself introduces the story, positioned as magician, charlatan and a fake himself, and as the picture proceeds, one begins to wonder how much of it is real and how much might have been fabricated given the nature of the set up. Primarily, it’s the story of Elmyr de Hory, self described and notably regarded as the greatest art forger in the history of the world. His renditions of Modigliani, Picasso and a host of other famous artists appeared to be so genuine that they managed to fool even the ‘experts’. Probably my biggest takeaway from the film was de Hory’s contention that ‘experts’ were highly overrated, a feeling I’ve maintained for the longest time because so often they’ve been proven wrong. Think of stock market analysts, professional pollsters or political pundits, wrong every day of the week and never held to account. It makes me crazy.

Adding to the surreal nature of the story is the involvement of author Clifford Irving, himself a fraudster of undisputed merit over the Howard Hughes biography affair of the early Seventies. Irving held the world in thrall as Hughes denounced him and sued his publisher before the truth came out. Welles, no stranger to transposing fiction for fact, includes snippets of his ‘War of the Worlds’ radio hoax in 1938. I’ve often wondered how I might have reacted if I’d been born early enough to hear that broadcast. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t have been taken in by it, but who’s to say; I heard a recreation of it once, and without commercial breaks, it sounded like it could have been on the up and up.

When I initially started watching this film, I almost gave up on it when I realized it wasn’t going to be a ‘real’ movie, but then thought ‘what the heck’. Elmyr de Hory did seem like a fascinating character, the kind of person I would personally avoid like the plague, but he did have a compelling insight regarding his philosophy about forged art. He said that if they hung around long enough, they would become real. You almost can’t argue with logic like that.Read More