History Film / FForFake

The last major film written, directed and featuring legendary director Creator/OrsonWelles. Made in 1974, it is essentially a fast-paced rumination on truth, fakery and expertise, particularly with regards to authorship and authenticity within art.

%% ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

* UnreliableNarrator: Virtually the trope codifier. See WhamLine, 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 is Welles' final film.

RealLife had a DownerEnding, by the way: de Hory killed himself in 1976 when told that he'd soon be extradited to France to face trial for forgery.

%% (This is fluff, please give more context as to why this is sort of a documentary.) * {{Documentary}}: ... Sort of.

%% (Not an example, please give context. Simply another trope is not context.) * TheReveal

->''"Ladies and gentleman, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact."''

* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"[[ExactWords I did promise that for one hour, I'd tell you only the truth. That hour, ladies and gentlemen, is over.]] [[{{Troll}} For the past seventeen minutes, I've been lying my head off.]]]]

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. For a long time the film was Welles' final film, until the posthumous release of ''The Other Side of the Wind'' in 2015.

%% (This is not an example, please give more context as to why Orson's line is ExactWords.) * ExactWords: Read Orson's line above again.
* FanService:
** Several layers; the opening credits run over footage of Oya 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.
** Goes even further late in the film, when Welles' expands on Oya's past, as a model for Picasso. It consists of over 10 minutes of watching her in a succession of flattering outfits, and eventually no clothes at all. [[spoiler:Of course, this is all a lie. None of it really happened.]]

%% * {{Narrator}}

* RealLifeWritesThePlot: {{Invoked}} 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.

* TakeThatCritics: {{Invoked}}; a central theme of the movie is questioning what, exactly, the point of art criticism even ''is'' if the art critics can't even tell a genuine article from a forgery. Needless to say, de Hory, Irving and Welles have some pretty snarky things to say about critics and 'experts'.
* TakeThatMe: Creator/OrsonWelles spends a lot of time mocking his image and past as a faker:
--> '''Orson Welles''': I guess you could say I started at the top and worked my way to the bottom.

->''Ladies and gentleman, by way of introduction, this is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. Tell it by the fireside or in a marketplace or in a movie, almost any story is almost certainly some kind of lie. But not this time. This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact.''

* TheCameo: Welles' old friend from way back in the Mercury Theatre days, Joseph Cotten, pops up to reminisce about how they were going to do a Howard Hughes biopic with Cotten in the lead, before Welles decided on ''Film/CitizenKane'' instead. Then there's a clip of Laurence Harvey, who died of cancer not long after Welles completed production.

* GenreShift: The film actually began as a straight documentary about Elmyr de Hory. Then the footage was given to Orson Welles, who added his own material and made something much, much weirder.

* SpiritualSuccessor: ''Film/ExitThroughTheGiftShop'' another documentary assembled largely from stock/found footage examining the nature of art and authenticity, with a DeadpanSnarker director.

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 ... 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.

* DeadpanSnarker: Welles somehow manages to combine this with SesquipedalianLoquaciousness. And it is ''glorious''.

* DirtyOldMan: Picasso, according to Welles. [[TheReveal However...]]
* DistractedByTheSexy / MaleGaze: One scene is a montage of men gawking at Oja Kodar as she walks down the street in a short skirt.
* {{Documentary}}: ... Sort of.
* ExactWords: Read Orson's line above again.
* FanService: Several layers; the opening credits run over footage of Oya 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.

* {{Narrator}}
* RealLifeWritesThePlot: {{Invoked}} and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]; as noted above, 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.
* TheReveal: See BrickJoke.

--> '''Orson Welles''': I guess you could say I started at the top and worked my way to the bottom.

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 ... during filming, was discovered to ''himself'' be a fraud, having published a biography of notoriously reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes 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.

* SpiritualSuccessor: ''ExitThroughTheGiftShop'' another documentary assembled largely from stock/found footage examining the nature of art and authenticity, with a DeadpanSnarker director.

The movie is framed around a biography-stroke-examination of 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 Howard Hughes that was based entirely on forgeries and faked evidence. Naturally, Welles couldn't resist [[ThrowItIn putting]] ''[[ThrowItIn that]]'' [[ThrowItIn in]], which gradually leads to Welles musing on his ''own'' tendency towards being a faker over his career. And this all begins to bleed into the movie itself, until it's not sure what's real and what's not... and whether, ultimately, that even matters.

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.

* DistractedByTheSexy

The last major film written, directed and featuring legendary director OrsonWelles. Made in 1974, it is essentially a fast-paced rumination on truth, fakery and expertise, particularly with regards to authorship and authenticity within art.

-->-- '''OrsonWelles''' [[note]] By the way, [[BrickJoke you may want to take note of how long the film is...]][[/note]]

-->-- '''OrsonWelles''' [[note]] By the way, [[BrickJoke you may want to take note of how long the film is...[[/note]]

-->-- '''OrsonWelles''' [[hottip:*: By the way, [[BrickJoke you may want to take note of how long the film is...]]]]