History Film / FForFake

* AuthorAppeal: Welles was an accomplished stage magician, and was therefore fascinated with the slight of hand tricks by con men.[[note]]Stage magicians are usually aware of confidence game tricks; [[Series/NightCourt Harry Anderson]] was a stage magician and knew con man schemes very well, too.[[/note]]

* LighterAndSofter: Almost every Welles movie is intense, dark, serious and documents self-destructive ByronicHero or VillainProtagonist. This film is far and away Welles' lightest work, even being somewhat optimistic, humorous and above all "fun".

Originally, Welles was hired merely to narrate the film, to be directed by Francois Reichenbach (who appears in the film). The subject was Elmyr de Hory, a professional art forger who proudly boasted that he had sold thousands of paintings to galleries all around the world, with every expert who had examined them convinced they were the genuine article. He was the subject of a biography by Clifford Irving ... who, during filming, was discovered to ''himself'' be a fraud, having published a biography of notoriously reclusive billionaire Creator/HowardHughes that was based entirely on forgeries and faked evidence. Reichenbach and his staff were horrified by this revelation since they had used Irving as a trusted source for a straight documentary about Hory, Welles however enjoyed this turn of events. He convinced the crew to give him the footage, where he made the entire film an exploration of fakery, that of Elmyr de Hory, Clifford Irving, the art galleries, Howard Hughes, Hollywood, mass media, Pablo Picasso's and of course his ''own'' tendency towards being a faker over his career. This leads to a MindScrew that finally bleeds into the movie itself, until it's not sure what's real and what's not... and whether, ultimately, that even matters.

** Several layers; the opening credits run over footage of Oja Kodar, Welles' girlfriend and the co-writer of the movie, being the subject of "the fine outdoor sport of girl-watching", with the numerous men glancing at her as she passes them captured on concealed cameras. This ties into the theme of trickery and reality (the men don't know they're being observed, so their reactions are genuine). It is also a good reason to have footage of Welles' rather attractive girlfriend walking around in a figure-enhancing dress practically designed to best display her [[ShesGotLegs legs]] and rear end.

* BadassLongcoat: Orson Welles' outfit in the film, complete with NiceHat.

The fast-paced editing techniques used by Welles in the film have been credited with influencing, among other things, the "MTV" style that premiered in the 1980s. The format and style has been adopted by most [=YouTube=] video essays: combining documentary and satire, with the occasional skit thrown in. This was Welles' final completed film until ''Film/TheOtherSideOfTheWind'' was released on November 2, 2018, after ''42 years'' in the vaults.

The fast-paced editing techniques used by Welles in the film have been credited with influencing, among other things, the "MTV" style that premiered in the 1980s. This was Welles' final completed film until ''Film/TheOtherSideOfTheWind'' was released on November 2, 2018, after ''42 years'' in the vaults.

* {{Mockumentary}}: Although it starts out as a documentary about how a film about a famous faker was derailed by an even more notorious fake, the film shifts to become more of a spoof of the documentary format as it progresses.

* MasterForger: Elmyr de Hory is a forger who spent decades selling fakes of Picasso, Matisse, and others before the art world finally caught on. The documentary had a mid-development shift to a general view of fakery when it was discovered that Clifford Irving, the reporter used for the research on de Hory, was a forger himself (he is mentioned in the RealLife examples below).

The fast-paced editing techniques used by Welles in the film have been credited with influencing, among other things, the "MTV" style that premiered in the 1980s. Pending the release of the incomplete ''The Other Side of the Wind'', this was Welles' final completed film.

%% (Give example.) * DeadpanSnarker: Welles somehow manages to combine this with SesquipedalianLoquaciousness. And it is ''glorious''.
* DeathOfTheAuthor: Welles reflects on this in-universe, suggesting that maybe authenticity isn't important to art:

%% (Why is he this?) * DirtyOldMan: Picasso, according to Welles. [[TheReveal However...]]

* ExactWords: Read again Welles' line at the beginning about how everything for the next hour would be completely true. [[spoiler:The movie lasts about a hour and a quarter, and that last quarter of an hour is dedicated to Welles telling a tale about Oja's supposed past as a model for Picasso, which in the end he reveals to be a lie and that it never really happened.]]

* HighClassGlass: de Hory breaks one out from time to time. Most notable in the scene where de Hory is using a High Class Glass while someone else explains in voiceover that de Hory is not from a noble family, as he claimed, but was from the lower middle class.

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: {{Invoked|Trope}} and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]; as when it was revealed during filming that Clifford Irving, de Hory's biographer, was himself a faker, this was too good ''not'' to put in.

* AlliterativeTitle: '''F''' '''f'''or '''F''ake.