F for Fake: The Last Film of Orson Welles

"This," says a somber, black clad Orson Welles amidst an eerie surrealist backdrop of dangling picture frames, "is a story about lies."

"Tell it by the fireside, or in a marketplace or in a movie theatre," the old magician continues, "almost any story is certainly, some kind of lie. But not this time. No; this is a promise. For the next hour everything you hear is really true and based on solid fact."

F for Fake is the dazzling, min-bending final film to be released by the grand master of psychological cinema, Orson Welles. Citizen Kane is widely recognized as one of the most groundbreaking films of all time and has been named by the American Film Institute as the number one film ever. But Citizen Kane was only the very first in the long and often underappreciated career of the legendary film maker.

Assaulted by film studios and newspapers led by the begrudging William Randolf Hearst, Welles' career spiraled down a moneyless chute into oblivion. His final project, The Other Side of the Wind, was a doomed independent labor funded almost entirely by the once proud celebrity's appearance in a barrage of embarrassing television commercials. Welles died during the editing of The Other Side of the Wind, and the film has never been released.

And so we are left with Orson's other last movie, the quixotic yet inspiring F for Fake. Welles intended to pioneer an entirely new film genre with the film, "the personal essay" as he called it. The movie is partially based on a documentary by Francois Reichenbach, and follows the scandalous exploits of the great art faker, Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving on the small Mediterranean island of Ibiza.