The focus of my response to Orson Welles’ F for Fake (1974) will explore how Welles destabilizes notions of authorship and authenticity in the transitionary period bridging, or perhaps fusing together characteristics of Modernism and Postmodernism; an era which is commonly denoted as Late Modernism. Within my response, I will discuss the illusive construct of appearance and reality, the role of Orson Welles, alongside Roland Barthes’ denouncement of the author and the incarnation of “the modern scriptor”[i], and finally: how the film questions the cultural authenticity of the Modernist era.
Both the content and aesthetic presented by F for Fake displays an incongruence between what is seen and heard, which disrupts the viewer’s judgment of authenticity. Welles introduces himself to the viewer as a self-proclaimed charlatan paradoxically promising to deliver truth. This immediately presents a dilemma in juxtaposing truth and illusion; compromising our natural sensibilities toward authenticity and staging the duplicity of appearances. Another example of how Welles constructs dramatic tension between what is seen and heard is the relationship between Elmyr and Irving. We are informed of their affiliation (Irving is Elmyr’s biographer), but there is no visual evidence to corroborate this knowledge; they are never pictured in the same shot. This predicament of authenticity is escalated upon the detailing of Irving and Elmyr’s capability to create elaborate hoaxes and their inherently deceitful nature. For example, Irving’s fabricated interaction and agreement with Howard Hughes, he also implicates Elmyr as living in a “world of make believe” with “60 names, 60 personalities”. These examples of fakers implicating other fakers or confessing to their own acts of fraud culminate to question: to what extent can the viewer accept the information relayed (and the film itself) as genuinely authentic?. Another illusive construct Welles utilizes in baffling the viewer’s sense of authenticity is the films aesthetic. The mode in which historical documents are positioned against the ‘constuctedness’ and artificiality of elements such as the soundtrack, the highly evolved editing and the constant flux in representing ‘the ultimate manipulator’ (from Elmyr, to Irving, to Welles) makes it difficult to determine the central subject matter, let alone filter out the real from the fake.
In further examining how the film is constructed, Welles issues the impression that the film is being assembled and viewed concurrently; we continually witness him in the editorial chamber sifting through various materials, sourced from footage, newspaper articles, photos etc. In exposing this tangibility of the artistic process, it becomes apparent that Welles’ role resides not in the authoring, but the ‘stitching together’ of these archival fragments. An insight which resonates particularly strongly with this methodology is Roland Barthes’ notion of : “...the modern scriptor (as) born simultaneously with the text, (and) in no way equipped with being, preceding or exceeding the writing... there is no other time than that of the enunciation, and every text is eternally written here and now.”[ii] Thereby, if we are to conceive Welles as the “modern scriptor” speaking as the film is produced, Welles has no claim to authenticity or authorship. As a character within his own film, he develops (“is born”) with the text. This overturns both the omniscience and narrative control sought by the typified early modernist author. Furthermore, the notion of there being “no other time than that of the enunciation” is exemplified by the timeless, placeless quality which characterizes Welles’ compilation of the material. Potentially recorded decades apart, the chaotic ordering of the information renders Welles as the viewer’s only historical reference point. In plotting this simultaneous evolution of the “modern scriptor” and the text in terms of Late Modernism, Ihab Hassan’s dichotomy between the Modernist “Art Object/ Finished Work” and the Postmodern notion of “Process/Performance/Happening”[iii] may reflect how F for Fake can placed in the transitionary phase of Late Modernism.
In accordance with the afore mentioned enigma of appearance and reality, it is valid to assume that unlike earlier Modernist texts F for Fake is not concerned with capturing authenticity. Alternatively, the film is inclined toward revealing the transparency of authenticity, as Whitworth expounds: “Sifting appearances rather than plumbing depths”[iv]. Instead of denouncing frauds, the film seems to explore the tyrannical and incompetent regime of the Art dealers and Museum curators who are unable to detect fakery. This raises the idea of the innate fallibility of the institution in deriving an official standard of what is authentic, a perspective verbalized by Elmyr: “(it) should not exist, one single person who makes a decision about what’s good or what’s bad”. In successfully exhibiting his imitations of modernist masterpieces, Elmyr overturns the validity of expertise, ultimately questioning the value of the artworks he mimics and exposing the commodification of modernism, (which ironically provides his livelihood). This notion of the commercialization of the intellectual Modern genius and its susceptibility to corruption destabilizes the aura surrounding Modernism as an era of cultural flourish and authenticity. In determining its value, Welles sums up the ultimate mortality of art, stating: “everything must wear away into the ultimate and universal ash, the triumphs and the frauds, the treasures and the fakes” concluding that “maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter”, which diminishes the elitism of the artist’s signature and concedes that the value of everything is destined to erode: the masterpieces amid the fakes.
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