F for Fake (Vérités et Mensonges), a 1973 documentary by Orson Welles (top still), is a fractured and non-conventional personal reflection on truth and lies. Welles uses footage from other films in a deliberately piecemeal telling of the story of two professional phonies: Howard Hughes hoax-biographer Clifford Irving (middle) and art-forgery maestro Elmyr de Hory (bottom). Welles seems to assume that the viewer already knows all about his rather pompous subjects. Orson Welles himself has tremendous charisma when he's on the screen: the viewer endures Irving and de Hory in order to enjoy Welles's sarcasm, anecdotes, and sonorous rotundity when he puts himself front and center.
