Monday 2 August 2004

F For Fake

Bright Lights Film Journal has a couple of articles on Orson Welles that are worth a look.

It's nice to see F For Fake get some recognition and, as the article points out, it's much more than the "film as editing" that I usually describe it as.
Throughout F for Fake, Welles sustains a lightly detached air, as if the film were an artistic exercise or game, which might disappoint those anticipating the tragic failings of Welles’ “great” men; indeed, this film seems to be more of Welles coming to terms with everyone's (including his own) expectations of his own greatness since Citizen Kane. Welles himself succumbed to celebrity in his later years, his girth beyond even Hank Quinlin proportions. Only within the infinity of mirrors that’s emblematic of his own artistic themes, Welles could at once deflate the expectations but also finally transcend them.


Also Citizen Kane gets another looking at. It includes this odd but good advice at the bottom:
Citizen Kane is of course available all over the place in the format of your choice. Type “Citizen Kane overrated” in a search engine for a wealth of anti-Kane articles and postings. Then, as penance, go to the Kane entry on the Internet Movie Database — as good a place as any to start the search for more information on the film.

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