10 Crazy Tricks Directors Tried To Pull On Audiences

The legendary Orson Welles is as famous for a prank as he is for his magnificent contributions to cinema and art. Structured in the style of a radio news bulletin, his 1938 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds was introduced as a drama. Nonetheless, it still managed to fool the programme’s small audience into thinking an alien invasion was occurring, although reports of a nationwide panic were subsequently exaggerated.

But Welles’ interest in illusion ran deep. He had a lifelong interest in magic, claiming in a 1955 documentary to have been taught as a child by Harry Houdini himself. Whether this was true or not has never been confirmed - indeed, a story Welles tells about Houdini in the same documentary is manifestly untrue, invented by Welles for the camera.

1973’s documentary-drama F For Fake was the culmination of Welles’ love of trickery. Ostensibly about professional art forger Elmyr de Hory, the film delves deep into questions of authenticity and authorship.

However, many of those interviewed - Hory’s biographer, Clifford Irving, for example - were also forgers, making statements which Welles must have known were untrue - including Welles himself. Not only that, but the film was carefully edited to creating the illusion that unrelated slices of footage were shot in real time.

In a posthumous BBC documentary Orson Welles: Stories From A Life In Film, Welles stated that "everything in that film was a trick." Appropriate, from a man who spent his whole life turning trickery into art.