10 Unjustly Forgotten Films By Famous Directors

3. Orson Welles - F For Fake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv80qRfUxG0 Like the Cable Hogue video, the video you see above is not the film's trailer but the film's opening scene. This is for two reasons: 1) Welles' trailer, a nine-minute short film almost entirely separate from the film itself, was never finished; and 2) this scene gives us a chance to see an overlooked facet of Welles' talent: his skill as a magician. Obviously, he was a great one. There's no question that Orson Welles is one of the greatest filmmakers there's ever been; at his best, as he was with films like Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, he made masterpieces that are still unequaled today. Even when Welles was working as a director-for-hire, he produced such entertaining and artful films as The Lady From Shanghai and Touch Of Evil. One thing that makes Welles unique is that he was also a great showman. He reveled in his larger-than-life style, which, in this writer's opinion, was based not only on his towering works but also on his physically imposing size, his deep, booming voice and his opinionated personality. Welles took particular advantage of his living-legend status in F For Fake, his final finished film. The film tells two "entirely true" (and those of you who have seen the film know why I've put those two words in quotes) stories of two famous con men: art forger Elmyr De Hory (who sold thousands of art forgeries to galleries all over the world before realizing that he was actually losing money on each forgery) and author Clifford Irving (who published a completely-fabricated "authorized biography" of Howard Hughes). However, Welles, never one for being conventional, takes us on tangents that are even more fun than the main story-line, the most notable being those about Welles' own life (specifically about him faking a resume at the beginning of his career and the infamous 1938 "War Of The Worlds" broadcast) and a wild story about Picasso's nude paintings. This is the most modern-feeling of Welles' films, primarily due to its editing. In fact, some people argue that, after Citizen Kane, F For Fake is Welles' most influential film, a forerunner of the fast-edited films that are so prominent today. However, Welles outperforms the directors utilizing fast editing today, using the technique in all kinds of creative ways (including making fake newsreels, creating fake debates between people who had never met, and re-cutting sequences to appear to be un-edited, real-time footage). It's obvious that Welles had fun making this film; he toys with the audience at every turn and we love him for doing so. F For Fake was panned by U.S. critics upon its American release; perhaps that's why it's largely forgotten in my country. It got better reviews in Europe, though, so those of you overseas may not consider this film overlooked at all. At any rate, Welles' final film is a fun, fast-paced jaunt, a breath of fresh air and a film unlike any made before or since (and a film, by the way, that is available on Youtube for free).