Werner Herzog said about the craft of documentary style filmmaking “It’s all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means Feature Film in disguise”. This quote was personified by the ground breaking (first time) director of Citizen Kane in his 1973 Docudrama “F for Fake”. The tone of the fast paced and deceivingly stylistic “Documentary” is set in the five minute and thirty second opening. Orson Welles is front and centre throughout.
F for Fake is a film about fakery, forgery and illusion! From the very start the viewer is unaware of what kind of film they are in. The mise-en-scene is seemingly standard for any fictional film. A classic establishing shot is reminiscent of any modern fictional piece; one in which Orson plays a local magician and is about to get tied up into a bigtime scam. The diegetic sound effects are standard train station foley and the lighting is natural and ordinary.
Welles begins his themes of fakery immediately with his use of composition, each frame involves sleight of hand trickery, meanwhile blocking and fast paced cuts to introduce not a documentarian but a mysterious figure, a fictional man for whom the camera cannot find a face until one minute in. Which is representative of how little we know this man and how little we will truly get to know or trust him throughout the film. The use of his voice gives him an omniscient presence despite the overall narration being much more alternative. Welles’ rapid talking and need to get each sentence out before the previous sentence has finished matches the rate of cuts and even this small detail is sending the viewer the same message “Try to keep up”. It is not dissimilar to the methods of disorientating speech used by the confidence tricksters of the world and makes Orson at one with the men he will be discussing later on in the film.
Costume design plays an important role in the film with Welles and Kodar dressing significantly different to the other characters we meet throughout the sequence. While most characters are seen wearing down to earth fashion – at least by 1970’s standards – that would be expected of them. Welles dons a Don Quixote inspired hat and cloak like coat. He is larger than life and exudes the look of an elusive villain; a man to be trusted no more than the art forger he’s telling us about.
On the other hand, Kodar dresses like a starlet; similar to the glamorous Hitchcock blondes and just too perfect to be real; the choices of fashion foreshadows the revealed fiction of Kodar’s character. The juxtaposition of the down to earth dress of the cast, crew and subjects with the conspicuous garments of the stars, continues to reinforce the fine line between documentary and fictional film and furthering the theme of distrust and deceit throughout the film.
The framing of Welles and the use of differing angles to obscure his face and focus the attention on his hands as he performs the tricks, or his stature compared to the children he is performing for, are reminiscent of Elmyr de Hory; the mysterious figure who’s elusiveness and ability to fool those below his talents become the focus of the film. Even with the truth of this project still in question, we are already familiar with the themes that Welles’ will address over the next eighty eight minutes.
Welles’ performance of a magic trick to the children in many ways mirrors our own relationship with the director, they naively enjoy the magic tricks with no real knowledge of how he has achieved his goals and are simply enjoying the magic of the display. It would be in keeping with Welles’ Character if his own audience was viewed as naïve and susceptible to anything the film would tell them. It succeeds as a subtle relation to our own relationship with films and documentaries. The self-reflective approach that soon cuts into the show prove as a call to action to not just passively watch a film, but to be actively be involved with the filmmaking process.
The rapid editing process also makes use of cross cutting methods of filmmaking on a number of occasions, for example, filming the bystanders watching camera crews and cutting them in to look like a magic show audience. This is reinforced by the self-reflective decision to frequently cut away to the film unit. Holding equipment and rolling the camera; they themselves carry the demeanour of a crew of fraudsters; Orson himself even introducing them to the only fictional character of the film as if she were real and continuing to blur the line between fact and fiction. This not only sets up for a future reveal, but ensures the audience are kept in the dark about the subject matter, manipulating their viewing experience from the very beginning and continually throughout the film.
As the audience struggles to grapple with what kind of film they are watching, they are rapidly enthralled and transported to the world of non-fiction. Gaffers hold up a white board for Orson to talk against, finally creating something resembling the Talking Head documentary that dominated the industry at the time. However despite Orson’s insistence that everything “For the next hour” is true it is with the contingence that film and any kind of art is “Some kind of lie”.
The disorientating mise-en-scene enforces the point that Welles’ view of what makes a documentary film should be are not in keeping with his viewers. The seemingly fictional location of a train station is littered with stage props and production equipment; the self-reflection serving as a means to make the audience complicit in the filmmakers own “Lies”.
The transportation of Welles’ from standing in front of a blank screen in a train station to a studio surrounded by aperture lights gradually lighting the stage as Welles’ promises to present only the facts, before rapidly cutting to a screen of text that merely reads “Fake” over and over again, which almost informs the viewers of their own deception.
Again this foreshadows things to be revealed. It goes so far as to tease the audience into distrusting their narrator, an unreliable and potentially untrustworthy narrator being a storytelling method never before used in documentary filmmaking. This conveys the strength with which Welles believes in his own filmmaking policies and that even in truth, artistic representations can often be fake.
While the obvious blending of fact and fiction in an informative piece of cinema is common place now, Welles was making a point of changing the way documentaries are made, as he had done for film over thirty years prior with Citizen Kane.
Three minutes in we are introduced to our main subject in a fast paced montage. This is the first part of the sequence in which the cinematography method moves from mobile frames more commonly used in fiction to scenes of Fly On The Wall footage in which various characters including Elmyr himself speak candidly. Notably the scene makes the first use of non-diegetic sound in the sequence. Using a tonally upbeat piece of music that emotionally effects the audience in a positive way is more common of a fiction film about loveable rouges than a documentary about professional criminals. The cross cutting of several conversations form a smaller sequence in which all of the key players of the film take turns introducing Elmyr as if they were sitting together and were presently on good terms which is not always the case, even in the introduction the audience is forced to give undivided attention just to keep up with the film and to ensure that they know where they stand in the fact vs fiction line.
Over the discussions the cooperation of the music with the cuts furthers the self-reflective agenda of the film, playing many cuts directly into the editing room. The choice of the sequence to make such extensive use of the editing room and of the film cans is another example of how Welles is continually bringing the audience back to the themes of deception. The vast display of film cans demonstrate to the audience the immense work that went into the post production of the artistic lies Orson is skilfully telling. He is almost competing with Elmyr’s forged artwork with his own faux documentary.
The fast edits can make it difficult to keep up with the mise-en-scene but something that shines through is the jet setting vibes that are exuded as the scenes take place at fancy dinner parties, recorded from a luxury villa – a lifestyle that in a way is also a lie. Welles’ own presence in the scenes create a situation in which he is not an impartial documentarian, but one of the cohort; making a movie about his friends. While very possible that the moment was staged it further sets Welles apart from the standard documentarian and in with the corrupted crowd. It forces to audience to question whether a man in pursuit of truth would be quite so cosy with the subjects of his investigation, again reinforcing the dishonesty of everyone involved including the filmmakers.
The dialogue choice that Orson makes in referring to Elmyr as an actor reinforces his worldview that he is not making a documentary but instead making a movie, a work of fiction that is not here to inform, but to entertain and even to trick. This is another example of the reinforcement of the fakery in the medium, true story or not Welles considers Elmyr as someone who is acting and has chosen to include the audience in on this fact despite having insisted that every word is true.
The final thirty seconds of the sequence is smash cut of seemingly unconnected images. Scenes of an alien spacecraft – an auspicious nod to war of the worlds – destroying what appears to be a government building, screen credits written out in crude paint and blurred edits of film cans. The opening titles descend into chaos like the story soon will. They disorientate the viewer, preparing them even less for what lays ahead. It sends the message that “This film is not your friend” and will not hold your hand or spell anything out to you. You are completely responsible for your interpretation of this film. In a way absolving itself of the blame for the deceit that lays ahead.
In conclusion; Orson Welles has taken the documentary format and successfully flipped it by using filmmaking techniques usually reserved for fiction filmmaking. Whether accidentally or purposely, Welles created The Film Essay. By doing this he has connected the audience on a deeper level with the subjects in question and has made them feel first-hand what it is to be uncertain of the truths that have been presented to them. They have been put in the shoes of the many victims of the art forgery affair and Welles has almost shown them what it means to be lied to. However; the themes of the film are of dishonesty and fakery. Welles’ insistence in the sequence that art is a lie and the many self-reflexive decisions make the audience part of the filmmaking process and as a result complicit in the lie. The five minute opening sequence sets the audience up for a whirlwind of information and emotion that will tell the true story of Elmyr de Hory, while reinforcing in the audience the many emotions and themes that will be explored throughout F For Fake.
T H E N A I V E F I L M M A K E R 