F for Fake

F for Fake
Originally uploaded by rustedrare.

Orson Welles's F for Fake is an example of documentaries as dangerous celluloid entities. In the world of fast paced information, documentaries have become our text books and news, but should we trust these forms of information? F for Fake gives us that answer: no. In F for Fake, Welles discusses great fakers: himself, the great art faker Elmyr; Elmyr's biographer and a faker himself, Clifford Irving; and Howard Hughes, about whom Irving wrote a fake autobiography. As Welles presents these non fiction characters, the editing is chopped into metaphoric dangling modifiers of dialogue: crosscuts into conversations may be misleading. Are the characters commenting on what we just saw and heard, or is this comment coming from a completely difference context of questions and stories? This is how the documetary director is easily the biggest charlatan of all cinematic fakers. Again, the documentary should never be fully trusted; after all, through editing, directors may easily create dangling modifiers of characters in order to mislead the viewer into their bias (that was a dangler right there).