F is for Fake

[Store Hadji]

Fake has been my favorite Welles film for some time, which is surprising since my first words to Ray Kelly after my initial viewing 100 years ago were "what the hell kind of movie is this, anyway?" It's a delight and I love it, though my attention does waver during the Chartres sequence everyone else seems to adore.

The earliest color footage I've ever seen or heard of by Welles was from the Carnival and Jangadeiros sequences in It's All True, clips of which appear in the excellent associated documentary. And didn't Welles answer "guilty as charged" to PB's query that he had directed his own scenes in David e Goliath? Those were in color. And I don't know which came first of these three, The Immortal Story, The Deep, or Orson's Bag, but those were all color as well.

And regarding completed projects, I include The Orson Welles Show and Filming Othello in that oeuvre, both of which postdate Fake.

Sigh, and what was this "Conversations with Roger Hill" thing that was shown at Locarno? I'd not heard of it until reading What Ever Happened to Orson Welles this evening.

Will our boys in Munich ever release their frankly superb reconstructions commercially, or is that derailed on the B & O Railroad as well?

Terry

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, Christopher, for the praise. As you do, as many do here, I find F FOR FAKE a dazzlingly brilliant film.

I plead guilty to you and Roger Ryan, not to mention Terry (above), that I erred in calling F FOR FAKE, Welles' first color film. I guess the tape copy of THE IMORTAL STORY that my old friend BAMBO-BAMBO Christianson made for me is so desaturated in color that I don't readily think of it as being in color. But of course, it is.

Terry, you are quite right about F FOR FAKE's late entry into Welles' color oeuvre, as I confess, but most of the other films you mention were either never finished, meant as inserts in larger films, murkily credited to others, or finished by different hands.

Stefan Droessler and his restorers have been quietly working on a mountain of Welles material for better than a decade. Every so often, they release a portion through one venue or another: "London," FILMING THE TRIAL, MOBY DICK, "The Golden Honeymoon," etc.

Stefan showed "A Conversation with Roger Hill," a small part of a much greater amount of footage, to Todd Baesen, Larry French and me on his visit to San Francisco before the most recent one. The documentary is a warm, relaxed kind of home movie, taken at the Hills' retirement estate in the Southwest (Sedona, Arizona). Welles and Hill, obviously old friends catching up, sit on what looks (in my memory) like a sun-porch overlooking a river. They reminisce about their time together at Todd School and other subjects, while Hortense Hill straightens them out occasionally, and keeps their coffee cups filled. It is a very nice work, showing Welles, as he so rarely allowed, being away from his public persona.

Glenn

[Store Hadji]

The Roger Hill stuff sounds wonderful.

I hope I may see it someday, without having to travel to the West Coast, East Coast, or transatlantically for a one-off showing.


Terry

[Glenn Anders]

Hi, Terry: I'd like to have a copy of that one myself.

I'm sure Stefan Droessler welcomes commercial DVD releases for his projects.

Send a few quid as a donation to the Munich Film Museum. It might stimulate another DVD being put on the market.

Regards.

Glenn

[Christopher]

This mistake has cropped up again and again in connection with the footage entitled "A Conversation with Roger Hill." After Roger sold Todd School, he and Hortense Hill retired to Coral Gables, Florida, where they spent a number of years until Hortense's ill health forced them to move north again, to Rockford, Illinois, where several members of their family lived, and here they both remained until their deaths. The Hills never lived in or had a retirement home in Sedona, Arizona. However, Welles had a home in Arizona before he moved his family to Las Vegas, and it was probably in his Arizona home that "A Conversation with Roger Hill" was filmed.

[Glenn Anders]

My apologies for that error, Christopher. I fear that I am the source of the spreading error. At the time, I did find it odd that a river would be running through the Hills' property in Arizona. Perhaps, it was just the strong impression I got that the Hills were the hosts for Welles, not the other way aboout. No matter, I stand corrected. Colonial papers, please copy.

Glenn

[mteal]

Had a chance to see this on the big screen a couple of weeks ago, as part of a morning Welles film series. It was the only one of the series I was able to catch, but it was nice to see about 200 people in the audience, so the series probably did OK. The print was a little beat up in spots, and they had it framed slightly wrong, but it still looked terrific on the big screen as all of Welles's movies do.

"In attempting to explain F For Fake’s state-side failure, it has occurred to me that perhaps the subject matter was at least partially to blame, and that this country is so blissfully enslaved by the notion of the special sanctity of the expert that an overtly anti-expert film was bound to go too much against the national grain."
—Orson Welles, 1983