Blu-ray Release: F for Fake

Blu-ray Release Date: Oct. 21, 2014
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


F for Fake

Orson Welles in his 1975 free-form documentary F for Fake

In 1975’s F for Fake, a free-form documentary by Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, The Stranger), the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous line between illusion and truth, art and lies.

Beginning with portraits of the world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes—not the least of whom is Welles himself.

Charming and inventive, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a clever examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.

Criterion previously issued F for Fake on DVD in 2005. This new Blu-ray edition ports over the bonus materials from that release, in addition to a handful of new features. Here’s the rundown on all of it:

• New, restored digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2005 by cowriter and star Oja Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver
• Introduction from 2005 by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
• Orson Welles: One-Man Band, a documentary from 1995 about Welles’s unfinished projects
Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery, a fifty-two-minute documentary from 1997 about art forger Elmyr de Hory
• 60 Minutes interview from 2000 with Clifford Irving about his Howard Hughes autobiography hoax
• Hughes’s 1972 press conference exposing Irving’s hoax
• Extended, nine-minute trailer
• An essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.