Blu-ray Release: F for Fake

Blu-ray Release Date: Oct. 21, 2014
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion

Orson Welles in his 1975 free-form documentary F for Fake

In 1975’s F for Fake, a free-form documentary by Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, The Stranger), the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous line between illusion and truth, art and lies.

Beginning with portraits of the world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes—not the least of whom is Welles himself.

Charming and inventive, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a clever examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.

Criterion previously issued F for Fake on DVD in 2005. This new Blu-ray edition ports over the bonus materials from that release, in addition to a handful of new features. Here’s the rundown on all of it:

• New, restored digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary from 2005 by cowriter and star Oja Kodar and director of photography Gary Graver
• Introduction from 2005 by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
• Orson Welles: One-Man Band, a documentary from 1995 about Welles’s unfinished projects
• Almost True: The Noble Art of Forgery, a fifty-two-minute documentary from 1997 about art forger Elmyr de Hory
• 60 Minutes interview from 2000 with Clifford Irving about his Howard Hughes autobiography hoax
• Hughes’s 1972 press conference exposing Irving’s hoax
• Extended, nine-minute trailer
• An essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum

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