321 - F is for Fake, United States, 1973. Dir. Orson Welles.
When first the flush of a newborn sun fell on the green and gold
Our father, Adam, sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold.
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart.
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
- Rudyard Kipling
The Conundrum of the Workshops
As quoted by Orson Welles.
One of the paintings in the catalog was a portrait of a woman by Modigliani.
He showed the Modigliani to one gallery owner and told him it was a fake. The gallery owner said, Yes, one can see that. Modigliani would not have drawn the arm parallel to the dress that way. The background is poor. The signature is wrong.
He showed the Modigliani to the next gallery owner and told him it was genuine. The gallery owner said, Yes, one can see that. It is one of his finest works, a portrait of Mademoiselle Hebuterne. We know it well. It is reproduced all over.
What?
Wherever Irving went, each gallery owner went along with whatever he told them.
Which statement was true? Was the Modigliani fake or genuine?
The "Modigliani" was really painted by Elmyr de Hory. Or Heury. Or Bury. Sury. Kury. Bury. Dury. Or Elmer Hoffman. Or Baron Raynal. Or Compte de Herzog. Or whichever of his more than 60 names he was using at the time.
Irving dug more deeply. He tried again.
"I wanted to find out what it was really like to try and get an expertise on a fake, and I asked Elmyr to do three drawings for me: two Matisse and a Modigliani--which he did before lunch, and put a little coffee stain on the edge of the Modigliani to make it look really as if Modigliani had done it in some Paris cafe. I then took the three drawings to the Museum of Modern Art. The museum examined them for two hours and came back with the verdict that they were absolutely genuine, and, in fact, were horrified that I wanted to sell them."
Irving had his friend paint three forged paintings in one morning and in two hours the experts verified that they were genuine.
Orson Welles observes, "One nod from an expert and that piece would be worth maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars."
Elmyr puts his canvas in the fire.
We watch them burn.
No worries. He can paint another one by dinnertime. And it will look the same.
"All the world loves to see the experts and the establishment made a fool of," Irving says.
Elmyr de Hory has become the most notorious art forger in the world. He has a special gift. He can paint in the vein of many different styles of painters. The first painting he sold was a "Picasso." Painted by de Hory.
"I can paint false Picassos as well as anybody else."
Charles Irving knows Elmyr because he has written his biography. They now each live on the island of Ibiza off the eastern coast of Spain.
And he is so impressed with Elmyr's fakery that he wants to try it himself.
So he writes the autobiography of Howard Hughes.
Except that he does not.
Howard Hughes is stunned to discover his autobiography is being published, when he has not written one. And the co-writer is a man of whom he has never heard before. He is so shocked he comes out of hiding long enough to telephone some journalists and state his case.
Let us dig further still.
Francois Reichenbach is directing a film about the art forger Elmyr de Hory.
Then they discover his biographer Charles Irving has become a literary forger.
He turns over his film to Orson Welles, who now makes a film about it all, including putting Reichenbach in front of the camera as his camera operator.
Orson Welles began his career as a faker when Welles did Wells. He faked a martian landing and sent the nation into hysterics. Or more properly, on Sunday, October 30, 1938, for the Halloween episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, he adapted and read the H. G. Wells novel The War of the Worlds (1898), and all of America went into a panic, believing that real Martians were really landing.
Or so that is what we have been told growing up.
Perhaps that story itself is a fake. The radio show's ratings were limited. The show was up against Edgar Bergen the ventriloquist. The newspapers, we are now told, printed the story of the panic to drive audiences back to print,
Welles then talks about his own portayal of Howard Hughes, years before, in Citizen Kane. Joseph Cotten visits us to talk about what might have been if they had gone with their original plan and he had played Howard Hughes openly, with that name. They show a new News on the March, the spoof of March of Time that opens Citizen Kane, but in this one they speak explicitly about Howard Hughes and tease him. He can no longer hurt Orson Welles, so Orson is free to be playful.
By the way, Orson says, we do not know if Hughes' telephone call was itself really him. Hughes was known to use doubles.
And Charles Irving's fake autobiography of Hughes might not have been written by Irving either. It may have been written by his wife Edith!
Orson Welles begins and ends with magic tricks. He makes a key turn into a coin and disappear. And reappear. And turn into a key and turn into a coin and disappear. Many iterations. All putting a smile on a little boy's face.
He takes us to Chartres. Chartres Cathedral. "A celebration of God's glory and to the dignity of man."
But who designed it? Who built it?
"The premiere work of man, perhaps, in the Western world, and it is without an author."
Welles takes us on a tour de force of reflection on the nature of art and commerce, truth and lies, genuines and forgeries, experts and novices.
But he promises both verbally and in writing, that everything we hear during the next hour will be true, "based on solid facts."
This film is made in the latter part of Orson Welles's career and yet in it he looks young. He is still only in his fifties.
He played older, broken men so often that viewers may mistakenly identify him with those characters. Charles Foster Kane. Gregory Arkadin. Hank Quinlan. King Saul. John Falstaff. Mr. Charles Clay.
But here he plays himself. With a childlike sparkle in his eyes. Generosity of spirit. Love of life. Love of stories. Love of filmmaking. And love of MAGIC.
He is still the five-year old boy seeing his first magic trick.
He is delighted.
And he is delightful.
And charming.
The film may be difficult at first for one to watch. If so, watch it again. It unfolds beautifully with repeated viewing.
Peter Bogdanovich observes in his introduction, "If you get on the film's wavelength and listen to what he is saying and watch what he is doing, it is riveting."
Bogdanovich is correct. This film's reputation is due only to grow with time, one day to be highly regarded. It is a record of Welles' genius.
And a record of his good-natured youthful zest. He is not the dying, decrepit old man. His is not bitter in any way. He is the living amenable artist. Fun-loving. Charismatic. And magnetic. You watch him and want to spend time with him. You listen to him and want to hear more. He has a beautiful soul to go with his deep rich voice and bright eyes.
It is also a textbook for aspiring film editors. Welles understands storytelling, and he knows how to tell great stories using cuts.
The story at the end, for example, is told first verbally by Welles and then through reenactment by Welles and Oja Kodar, with footage filmed by Welles intercut with pictures and paintings of Picasso.
And it is captivating. The tension builds with as much force as if one were watching the action take place in real time.
Oja (rhymes with Goya) Kodar is with Welles now. They tell us she was with Picasso before. She is herself a connecting link to the stories behind the film, and she has contributed to the film.
"As long as there are fakers, there have to be experts.
But if there weren't any experts, would there be any fakers?"
They ask a good question.
If so many museums around the world have so many fake paintings hanging on the walls, why not prosecute the forgers and correct the mistakes?
One, the scandal and embarrassment is too daunting to endure.
Two, the art dealers who took the stand as witnesses would themselves be made suspect. Who is to say that they were not in on it?
Three, the laws of certain countries, such as France, make it too difficult to prosecute. One would have to have a minimum of two witnesses witnessing that the signature on the painting is false and they themselves witnessed the false signing.
Painting a painting is not a crime. Painting an imitation of another painting is not a crime.
It is the signing of another's name to a painting, with the intent to deceive, that makes it a crime.
And de Hory insists he has never signed a single painting. He does not know how the signatures got there. Perhaps his buyers added them later.
Cut to Charles Irving.
He looks incredulous.
Cut back and forth between Irving and de Hory. Who is telling the truth and who is lying? Another brilliant piece of editing.
Back to our list above. We have listed three reasons why the perpetrators of the forgeries on the walls of art museums are not prosecuted. Now for a fourth.
Four, Elmyr maintains "If they hang long enough there they become real."
And Welles develops the idea.
Why is Picasso celebrated as a genius and de Hory put in prison as a criminal if they can paint the same painting?
"Is it just a forgery?
Is it not also a painting?"
If you step outside the movie, you will see that these men faced tremendous consequences for their deceptions, and their lives were filled with troubles. But inside the movie, they seem to sit apart from society, laughing at the success of their duplicity. Well, Welles does acknowledge that de Hory has lived life as a fugitive, always on the run, always concerned that he might go to jail, and having already spent some time in jail. de Hory would not live long past the making of the film.
In the end we all die. And our works outlast us. But then eventually they too fade away. We sing, but not forever.
Our songs will be silenced, but what of it?
Go on singing.
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