Episode 170: Art is Another Word for Truth: On Orson Welles's 'F for Fake'
Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film aesthetics.
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RERERENCES
\n\nOrson Welles, F for Fake
\nGilles Deleuze Cinema 2
\nElmyr de Hory, art forger
\nClifford Irving, American writer
\nHoward Hughes, American aerospace engineer
\nDavid Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film
\nDavid Thomson, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles
\nPauline Kael, Raising Kane
\n\u201cWar of the Worlds\u201d radio drama
\nThe Farm Podcast, \u201cHorror Hosts, Films & Other Strange Realities w/ David Metcalfe, Conspirinormal & Recluse\u201d
\nOrson Welles - Interview with Michael Parkinson (BBC 1974)
\nGeoffrey Cornelius, Cornelius
\nVictoria Nelson, Secret Life of Puppets
\nLionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
\nSokal affair, hoax
\nWerner Herzog, \u201cMinnesota Declaration\u201d