In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Orson Welles masters sleight of hand thanks to his nude muse Oja Kodar in the 1974 documentary F for Fake.
An absolute masterclass in editing, Welles' F for Fake traffics in trickery, illusion, slight of hand, and plenty of distraction to drive home its narrative points. Initially, the project was started as a documentary about famous art forger Elmyr de Hory, directed by François Reichenbach, with Welles hired to serve as the film's narrator. One of the men initially interviewed was Clifford Irving, who had written a biography of de Hory's life, but during the course ofthefilm being made, Irving became even more famous when his "authorized" biography of notorious recluse Howard Hughes was debunked by no less than Hughes himself.This obviously caused everything about the project to change.
Welles asked Reichenbach if he could take over the film and finish directing it himself, but not at the expense of everythingthat had already been filmed. Instead, Welles took Reichenbach's footage and supplemented it with additional material, morphing the film into less of a documentary and more of a filmed essayabout fakery in general. Welles bolstered the story of the two notorious fakers—Irving and de Hory—by weavingin his own experiences perpetrating a hoax on the world with his infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast. He also adds in tales of the many urban legends that cropped around Hughes when he dropped out of society, as well as an anecdote about a young woman, Oja Kodar, who conned Picasso out of two dozen paintings.
Welles carefully sets the audience up right away, making a solemn pledge to the audience that they're going to hear the truth, despite the film being about fakers, trickery, and charlatanism in all its many forms. Welles intones, "This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact," reiterating it with text after the film's opening titles. Anyone savvy enough to check the film's 88 minute running time ahead of seeing the film will likely find something off about the odd specificity of this quote, but Welles manages to keep things moving in such a way as to make the audience unaware of how long he's been riffing.
The film is an absolute masterclass in the art of film editing and should be studied at length by anyone fascinated with that element of production. Welles himself had always extolled the virtues of editing, sayingit was thepurest art form found in the medium of film, and F for Fakeseems like this thesis statement come to life. Perhaps the only "problem" with F for Fake, if you even want to call it that, is the fact that the film must absolutely be viewed more than once to be fully understood and appreciated. Throughout the film, Welles seemingly bounces about telling unrelated stories and editing in bits of other films he was working on at the same time, and it can be almost hopelessly confusing on a first viewing.
Upon revisiting the film once you know the basics of the story, however, it reveals itself to be much richer, deeper, and resonant than you ever could have imagined on your first viewing. This was Welles greatest talent as a filmmaker, creating works that don't reveal their true genius until you watch them again, and it's why he's so revered and admired to this very day,nearly four decades since his death. One can dislike this film or Citizen Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons or even Touch of Evil, but it would take an ignoramus of the highest order to deny that the craft on display in Welles' films is anything but extraordinary.
Now, to the matter at hand, that of Oja Kodar. Despite Welles having been married to Paola Mori since 1955, hecarried on an affair with Ms. Kodar that spanned the last twenty years of his life. Welles thought of Oja (pronounced Oy-ah) as both a personal and professional muse, inserting her intoseveral sequences of F for Fake. The film's opening titles are played over footage of Ms. Kodar walking the streets of Italy in a very skimpy dress, intercut with the many, many Italian men ogling her as she walks. Welles, briefly inhabiting the role of a more intellectual Allen Funt, tells us that these men have no idea they're on film, admiring them for acting away without being paid a single penny for their work.
This method of distraction once more rears its head in the film's final twenty minutes thanks to a killer story about Ms. Kodar, her art forger grandfather, and Pablo Picasso. Welles lays out a magnificent tale of Kodar and her friend vacationing in the same village as the famous Spanish painter. Every day, the artist would watch as Kodar would travel to and from the beach, taken by her extraordinary beauty. Eventually, he created 22 paintings of the brunette beauty that she insisted be given to her as a reward for her time spent posing for them. Wellespunctuates the story with frequent glimpses of his mistress in the altogether, distracting us with her beauty as his tale gets more and more elaborate...
After the tale of Ms. Kodar, her grandfather, and Mr. Picasso seems to push the bounds of believability, Welles solemnly comes to his confession,"I did promise that for one hour, I'd tell you only the truth. That hour, ladies and gentlemen, is over. For the past seventeen minutes, I've been lying my head off." It's a terrific rug pull moment, one that makes you feel like a fool for not only losing track of time, but for ever believing a self-confessed charlatan like Welles. Of course, in your defense, he was deliberately distracting you with shots of his naked mistress. That's enough to get any man to let down his guard, which is precisely what Welles' goal.
For a further appreciation of Welles' film andits many, many nuances, I would also encourage you to check out the short video below from the now-defunct YouTube page Every Frame a Painting...
