OPENING - THIS IS A FILM ABOUT LIES
Welles opens his film at a train station as he performs a magic trick for a couple of children. Welles uses frantic cuts that demand the audience pays attention to what they are looking at, similar to the kids watching Welles, who wears a magician’s cape, turn the key into a coin. We feel as if we are in a documentary, a studio film, a magic trick and that we are always a voyeur placing our personal interpretation on what we see. Welles is demanding we pay attention because what he is going to show us is the truth about trickery. Then, Welles then tells us that what we are about to see in the next hour is true and based on solid facts...just after he proclaims that he is a charlatan. This opening tells us that it is up to us to determine the truth, it’s our duty to detect and seek out what is real and what is fake, though it may not be so easy. We are next introduced to Elmyr and Clifford Irving, described as the biggest fakes of all who keep company with the jet setters and the beautiful people. Irving says it is not to distinguish a real painting from a fake, but a good fake from a bad fake.
BAIT
We next see Oja Kodar walking the streets as men gawk at her. We find out that this footage is from another film Welles made, and we then see him in an editing room pointing out that he’s borrowed this footage, and even questions why it would be in this picture, but does not tell us that. Welles is the one pulling all of the strings and just as we begin to look one direction he leads us in another. He is embodying the trickery that this film is about by performing magic tricks with his camera to tell the story, but he’s also building our trust by speaking directly to us as the narrator of the film. So, just as we begin to wonder what the heck is happening, he comes in to tell us everything is fine, let me show you what’s important, and by so doing becomes the theme of the film. Welles then continues to jump around with his editing, making the story even harder to follow. He finally jumps in to tell us that he’s been jumping around like this because this is how it was in real life, it was a mess to try to piece together. All of this after he puts in writing that this film is not a fake, it’s based on facts. Again, Welles is gaining our trust in him by separating the fake from the truth, and because he is the narrator and we’ve already been introduced to the phonies we can trust him. Right?
Welles then begins to start the story from the beginning in order to ‘piece things together.’ He then spills his glass of wine on the map where he is to show us Ibiza. This is a simple way of the narrator saying that he is to be trusted, and once again the image paints a different picture. And, Welles overlooks the spill with his playfulness. Saying that wine is good luck as he rubs it in his friend’s ears. This bit of fun let’s us enjoy the charisma of Welles, which ultimately keeps our eyes of what he doesn’t want us to see.
Clifford Irving and Emyr are now seen in Ibiza, and Welles shows us that Irving has been caught in a scandal of faking an autobiography of Howard Hughes which he tells everyone that his wife was the forger, not him. And, Irving also claims in a book that Emyr is a fake as well. Or as Welles says, “a fake faker.” Irving is claiming that Emyr is taking credit for painting fakes of real masterpieces. This has lead to Irving being sued for $55,000,000 worth of slander. Irving has written a book that Emyr is a fake. We soon learn that Irving himself was a struggling fiction writer himself before he met Emyr. It is important to note that Welles is continuing to blur the line between the two characters in this documentary. Are they on the same side or not? They potentially are on both sides.
Elmyr has made a fortune by reproducing famous pieces of art and selling them on the art market. Welles then exposes that the reason for Elmyr’s forgery is that he is most interested in bringing down the experts and the structures that deem a work to be real or fake, and thus whether it is worth anything or not. This is where we see the blurred line of Irving and Emyr’s relationship in that they both agree that the so called experts don’t have as much expertise as they claim to have. The proof being that there are leading museums that have Emyr’s fakes hanging on their walls claiming that they are real. Welles tells us that because of legal reasons they cannot expose the name of any museum. Again, we as the audience are left to wonder who is telling the truth. But, at the same time Welles is able to stir within us particular emotions about being preyed upon by these so called ‘experts’ at museums, and we begin to feel a connection to Emyr and what he is doing, as he is in a way a modern Robin Hood. Welles even shows him painting a portrait of Michelangelo, who they say was a faker himself until he went straight.
THE MYSTERY PACKAGE REVEALED
We learn that Howard Hughes used to receive a package placed in the tree at his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow every night. Sometimes he would get the package, sometimes not. Welles reveals it was a ham sandwich. We then are told that Hughes bought all of Las Vegas and would walk around in the night wearing empty Kleenex boxes for shoes. Welles tells us all of this to say that what we are told may or may not be the truth. But, the meaning that we give to a particular story is of value because then we discover that it is us who enhance the details and make it all infamous. Thus, we begin to believe stories that may or may not be true, and Welles points this out in order to show that Irving’s story of beginning a relationship with one of the most reclusive men in history, however improbable, could be believed because the ones hearing the story (the public) choose to believe it. We now see Elmyr’s influence on Irving in that to trust any one expert, to allow them to decide if something is fake or real is ridiculous.
Irving then says that the reason Elmyr had no personal vision and this is why he would copy the works of master artists. Welles then goes into telling us of Elmyr’s Hungarian descent. That the man had created a fabricated history of his life, that he had come from Hungarian aristocracy and brought paintings back from his family after the war. We find that everything about Elmyr is a fake. Even his house doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to an art dealer. And, that he has been living his life on the run, as is the life created from forgery.
ORSON
Welles transitions the film by telling us that he was once a painter in Ireland, and when at 16 years old he was out of money and paint he was able to step onto the stage in Dublin because he told the artistic director that he was a famous star from New York. They believed him, though he’d never stepped on a stage before, and this is how he got his start. It was followed up by Welles’ radio career where he told people that Martians were invading the Earth. People actually left their homes in fear. He was able to perpetrate this because if anyone had seen it on television, they wouldn’t have believed it. It would have been fake. But, Welles is showing us that, because the public’s imagination and their own personal belief systems were creating the reality for him, he was able to perpetrate the lie. He didn’t go to jail for this. He went to Hollywood, and made Citizen Kane. The film was first meant to be about Howard Hughes until it was changed to be about another tycoon, one in the newspaper business. Welles is now connecting his story to that of Elmyr and Irving through the use of Howard Hughes. He does this because he wants to point out the reclusive nature of Hughes in order to reveal another mystery. Irving’s documents stating that Hughes agreed to have him author his autobiography were proven legitimate. Thus, if Irving did deal with Hughes the real fraud becomes the person who claimed to be Hughes to Irving. And, many believe that it is Elmyr who defrauded Irving. But, Irving comes clean to the public in order to avoid Hughes pressing criminal charges.
IF THERE WEREN’T ANY EXPERTS THERE WOULDN’T BE ANY FAKERS
The story shifts back to focus on Elmyr. He hasn’t been jailed because if he is then the art market would be exposed, and “legitimate” organizations, the experts would be brought down. The second reason he hasn’t been jailed, claims Irving, is that there must be two witnesses to come forth who saw him forge a name on a painting. No one has come forth. Welles goes on to tell us that the true exposure of man is his death. Thus, we go on being forgers until we die. He uses a church, which has no named architect as the visual example, showing us that a lie can last for millennia before it too returns to dust.
Welles tells us that Oja, who we met in the opening of the film was the inspiration for 22 of Picasso’s paintings. And, Oja negotiated that every painting Picasso painted of her belonged to her. Picasso agreed, and this is how she made a fortune of $750,000,000. Not off of selling Picasso’s original work, no from fakes made by Oja’s grandfather, a Hungarian born art forger. Welles has taken us through an entire mystery of fakery with Irving and Elmyr to help us understand that the greatest off all fakes is the story that he himself has concocted to tell within this film, released as a documentary. Welles himself is creating cinema within the confines of documented truths. He’s broken down the boundaries of reality and story. And, the point becomes, can we tell the difference between what is real and what is fake? Welles ends this tall tale by reminding the audience that he promised to tell the truth for the next hour. Well, that hour had passed and for the last 17 minutes he was lying his head off. He was using an art story to tell his story. He calls himself a professional liar; which is someone who hopes to serve the truth. The pompous word for truth being art. Thus, art is a lie; a lie that makes us realize the truth.
