How Long Is “F for Fake”?

Orson Welles appears as himself in this witty and subversive film essay on fakery and forgery, art and illusion. Taking footage from an earlier Francois Reichenbach documentary on art forgery -- based on a book by the literary hoaxer Clifford Irving -- Welles worked his own clips into it, re-editing the original footage extensively. In the film, he tells of the success of his own fakeries, from the lies which got him into Ireland's Abby Theater, to his famous radio hoax about an invasion of Martians, and his subsequent career as an actor and film director. All of these memories are interspersed in a sort of documentary within a documentary about the art forger Elmyr de Hory -- a woman who conned Picasso out of almost two-dozen paintings -- and musings over the life of Howard Hughes and the man who forged an "autobiography" of Hughes, Clifford Irving. This 1973 production was the last full-length film Welles made.