
F for Fake (1973*) – ****
F for Fake presents itself as the story of two fakers – one irrepressible and unapologetic, one covert and ultimately contrite – told by a charlatan. The former, Elmyr de Hory, was an aspiring painter whose greatest skill was in imitating the masters – and made a pretty good living copying their work and creating new works in their style. The latter, Clifford Irving, was an unsuccessful novelist who turned first to non-fiction (including a book about Elmyr) and then to fraud, fabricating an autobiography of Howard Hughes despite not knowing the man.
The charlatan, Orson Welles, was too much himself to be a faker; he relates a story of how he lied his way onto the Dublin stage as a young man, but by the 1970s, he had spent most of his career struggling to make his films his way. Even as his films met with mixed reviews and minimal popular success, he stuck to his guns until the end, and those films he was able to make are now considered masterpieces.
Such is the case with F for Fake, which Welles openly intended to be “a new kind of movie;” in retrospect, it seems to anticipate the documentaries of Werner Herzog, the main difference being Welles’ theatrical bravado, the polar opposite of Herzog’s bone-dry deadpan. It’s a film so deft and freewheeling in its style that I struggle to describe it as it moves from the cheerful Elmyr to the calculating Irving to the sly, ruminative Welles to the enigmatic Oja Kodar to the even-more enigmatic Hughes.
Suffice to say that, while Welles was making a documentary about Elmyr – who happily crafts a fake Modigliani and a fake Matisse for the camera before burning them – for which Irving was a key participant, the story of Irving’s fraud broke, adding a whole other layer to a film which questions the very nature of authenticity. Welles could hardly resist. He claims that he will tell us only the truth for one hour – but the film runs an hour and a half.
It’s more useful, perhaps, to talk about the questions the film raises than to discuss its content. What makes art? What is authenticity? What makes an expert – and if the experts can be fooled (Elmyr certainly fooled a few) – how can they be trusted? And when Picasso is quoted as saying, “I can paint false Picassos as well as anybody,” how do we define the true artistic voice? How do we define truth?
Welles claims he will tell only the truth for one hour, but does that apply only to his statements? Are we to take what Elmyr and Irving say at face value? Can we believe what we see, when the very act of editing the footage shot for the film created a new reality subject only to Welles’ vision? Hell, the title never actually appears on screen as such – we only see the word “FAKE!” printed in rows. If that wasn’t intentional, it’s a thematically rich coincidence.
And it raises fresh questions in the age of AI as to what makes art and what makes an artist. If art is supposed to be the reflection of the world through the artist’s eyes, can a computer truly create art? If we were to set up a Turing test were AI art – perhaps generated in the style of an established artist à la Elmyr – were put alongside human art, would the experts be able to tell the difference?
For that matter, in this age of fake news and alternative facts, is the distinction between truth and falsehood any clearer? Welles mentions a few urban legends about Hughes, including one where he wore Kleenex boxes for shoes (referenced in The Simpsons); later generations would claim Richard Gere did unspeakable things with a gerbil and Marilyn Manson had ribs removed so he could go down on himself.
Given the film’s kaleidoscopic approach, it can be hard to dwell on these questions whilst we’re ping-ponging between the showboating Elmyr, the slick Irving (with a monkey on his shoulder), and Welles, who holds court in a restaurant one moment, ponders the film itself in the editing room the next, and passes through stylized voids as he holds forth on Chartres Cathedral and quotes Kipling (“It’s pretty, but is it Art?”).
Most of the time, it’s a wonderfully good-natured entertainment, heavily quotable (“Paris was suffering from August”), dazzling in its editorial ambitions, and brightened by the personalities on display, especially Elmyr and Welles. After a while, however, the sheer frivolity of it does grow just a touch wearisome, and the tall tale which serves as its final movement isn’t quite as convincing or compelling as Welles might’ve found it.
But then, it’s part of the film’s tribute to Kodar, Welles’ companion in the last two decades of his life; an early sequence shows her strutting down the street whilst men turn and stare (“the fine outdoor sport of girl-watching”), and later on we have a montage of her going to beach in increasingly revealing outfits as a certain famed artist watches in fascination. She would bare still more in The Other Side of the Wind, but here she is herself, as much as anyone is themselves in this slippery film.
Of course, Elmyr would later take his own life rather than be extradited on fraud charges, Irving would eventually slip back into obscurity, Welles would continue to accumulate unfinished projects, and it would be years before F for Fake would be recognized as more than self-indulgence. But here I am, calling it a delightful film – not Welles’ finest, but absolutely another feather in his cap. And that’s the honest truth.
Score: 89
* Deciding on a year for F for Fake is extremely difficult. It was completed in 1973 and had its festival premiere that year, but sources differ on its release schedule after that. Because the print used by the Criterion edition is copyrighted 1975, I count it towards my awards for that year.

Patton (1970) – ****
If F for Fake remains relevant in the age of AI, so Patton remains relevant in the age of cancel culture. “One dogface. One measly little slap. That’s what done it,” observes Patton’s valet, and Patton, having been relieved of command, having been rebuked by Eisenhower and vilified in the American press – who just before had praised his driving the Germans out of Sicily – replies, “I wish I’d kissed the son of a bitch.” It’s the last line before he sinks onto his bed and the film breaks for an intermission, Patton’s future as a combat officer in doubt because of – well, more than one measly little slap, but still.
Of course, the German high command can’t believe that the Americans would sideline Patton – the American general they most fear and respect – over such a matter, and the Allies use this to their advantage, moving Patton around Europe and convincing the Germans he’ll land here or there, drawing their attention away from small incursions like D-Day. Once he’s allowed back into combat, he performs most impressively – but once the war is over and he’s ready to turn on the Soviets, he’s relieved once again.
That’s the central dilemma of Patton; how much can one tolerate from a brilliant warrior if he makes peace nearly impossible? Patton himself struggles with the notion; Capt. Steiger (Siegfried Rauch), who profiles his character for the German high command, notes sadly that “The absence of war will destroy him,” and while the film doesn’t mention it, he would be dead before 1945 was out, and a few years later MacArthur would be relieved of command in Korea for wanting to do to the Chinese what Patton wanted to do to the Soviets.
Of course, you could argue that the message is undermined by the fact that Patton, and especially George C. Scott as Gen. George S. Patton, so dominates the film that his allies and adversaries alike seem rather puny. I used to think the film was simply at its best when Scott occupies center stage; I now think the film is decidedly more conventional when he doesn’t, and not quite as brilliant as I once thought even when he does.
Scott’s performance is still masterful, of course; note the small shift in tone at the end of his iconic opening speech, when he moves from paternal earnestness, saying “I will be proud to lead you wonderful guys into battle, anytime, anywhere,” to imperious reserve as he casts a final chilly glance at the audience and says “That’s all” before turning and stepping down. It’s one brilliant beat in a performance full of them.
And Jerry Goldsmith’s score is likewise masterful, the opening credits suite shifting from an organ-heavy intro into the famous, brass-heavy main theme (punctuated by the winds – it’s a great theme to whistle) before resolving back into a minor key as the action proper begins. It’s one of the great scores of its era, and I’m surprised it didn’t win the Oscar, given the film’s seven awards – including Best Actor for Scott, which he famously refused to accept.
Outside of these two aspects, however, the film only sporadically rises above other war films of the time. Franklin J. Schaffner won the Oscar for Best Director, but he was mainly a journeyman and it’s hard to say he brings a real vision to the film. He stages the battles well and the film looks good throughout, but aside from the haunting montage juxtaposing Patton’s weather prayer with a nighttime engagement of the Battle of the Bulge, there are few distinctive uses of the cinematic voice. It’s never less than smoothly professional, but too rarely is it more.
The Oscar-winning script, by Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North, is a mixed bag, again at its best when it sticks to the iconoclastic Patton, too rarely defining the rest of the characters outside of their relationship to Patton and trying to compress too much history (even if the film covers only about a year and a half) through info-dumpy dialogue and the use of newsreels to fill in the gaps. That so much of the film does focus on Patton (Scott is onscreen for 63% of the film) keeps the film from losing too much steam, but on repeat viewings it does become harder to ignore.
The lack of notable supporting performances doesn’t help. Karl Malden is quite solid as Gen. Bradley, even if it’s all too obvious the film was made with Bradley’s input, and Rauch is also good in the expository role of Steiger, the one German who truly understands Patton. But others, like Paul Stevens as Patton’s aide Col. Codman, feel like studio contract players, their well-groomed blandness jarring alongside Scott’s fierce complexity. Michael Bates’ foppish Montgomery is amusing but underused; James Edwards is likewise appreciated in his too-fleeting role as Patton’s valet, Sgt. Meeks.
The film also took Oscars for its art direction (solid, especially in the various settings appropriated for field headquarters throughout), editing (pretty good – the 171 minutes pass smoothly), sound (excellent, especially in the battle scenes), and for Best Picture – a solid choice, certainly better than Airport but not necessarily better than MASH. It was also nominated for its cinematography (some truly fine shots) and visual effects (mostly practical; Tora! Tora! Tora! deservedly won instead).
I say Best Picture was a solid choice because, despite the rest of the film not quite living up to the dynamic figure at its core, that figure is enough to make Patton a great film. It begins with that legendary speech where he motivates his troops with appeals to patriotism and masculinity, dashes of crude humor and profanity, and a heartfelt acknowledgement of his regard for them, but equally notable is the final scene, where he reflects on the triumphal parade accorded ancient Romans, as dead and gone as he soon will be, and, walking past a windmill, notes the sobering message whispered to each of them: “All glory is fleeting.”
Score: 88
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (2023) – **½

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is a true ship of Theseus, a film which contains none of the actual footage used in the 1979 version; it has many of the same scenes, but uses different takes and angles to ensure that what we’re watching isn’t just an attempt to stick closer to Gore Vidal’s original script, but is as far away as possible from that earlier version, which featured hardcore footage shot not by director Tinto Brass but by producer and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione.
Is it a separate film from the Caligula that Roger Ebert called “sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash” and Erik Beck named the worst film ever made? It has a separate IMDb page, unlike the alternate versions of, say, Apocalypse Now, so I suppose that yes, it is a separate film in the most technical sense. I won’t count The Ultimate Cut as such for my own awards – it’s not like The Other Side of the Wind which was never completed in any sense until decades after it was shot – but I will graciously allow it to stand to the side of the films I truly count towards this year.
Now, I don’t think the 1979 cut of Caligula is the worst film ever made, or even that close. I rate it a 43, a low **, a fairly poor film but not a historically terrible one. It’s too dull and repetitive to be truly upsetting, too long surpassed for sheer transgression to still be shocking, and too successful at (barely) achieving its grotesque goals to be written off as an absolute failure. It lacks the distinctive vision of Fellini Satyricon or the political potency of Salo, but it does have impressive production values and an epic amount of sex and nudity.
The Ultimate Cut retains the production values and doesn’t lack for explicit content, but it does have, as far as my memories of the 1979 version can attest, a more coherent story and a greater sense of purpose in its provocations. It omits, among other things, the epigraph from the Gospel of Mark – “What shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul” – which Beck rightly objected to, because there’s not much sense that Caligula was a good man corrupted by power; in this version he seems almost to be trying to destroy the Roman Empire out of subversive defiance.
There are two key issues that undermine The Ultimate Cut. The first is that no truly satisfactory version of Caligula will ever exist. It was written by Vidal, whose script was heavily reworked (if not largely ignored) by Brass, who was fired by Guccione. Guccione more or less won, because the man who pays the bills usually does, but all he ultimately wanted was profitable smut; Vidal and Brass wanted to make something more and neither saw their vision truly realized. (Brass disavowed The Ultimate Cut, which was made without his input.)
The second is that this version is, quite simply, too damned long, not just as a whole but on a scene-by-scene basis. Take the scene where Caligula visits Tiberius in his grotto and follows the decrepit emperor around as he rants semi-coherently and gives the camera time to drink in Danilo Donati’s sets, full of sexual details and elaborate sex machines, and the many fornicating extras; it makes its points pretty quickly and just keeps going, and going, and going, and at the very least cries out to be tightened up – but editor Aaron Shaps too often allows Brass’ long takes to play out at length. After 178 minutes – a good 22 minutes longer than Guccione’s cut – it begins to wear one down.
Had The Ultimate Cut been tightened up, I might have able to give it a low ***, because there is a great deal more to appreciate here than in Guccione’s cut. McDowell’s impishly vicious performance as Caligula may hit the same beats too often, but he’s never less than watchable. Helen Mirren is typically compelling in the underwritten role of his wife, Caesonia, and if Teresa Ann Savoy is less skilled an actress despite having the far larger role of Caligula’s sister/incestuous lover Drusilla, there’s a certain poignancy to her work. Peter O’Toole’s Tiberius probably comes off best; it’s often hard to make out his shouted lines, but his disease-ravaged face, cynical savvy, and staggering walk are viscerally effective. John Gielgud as Nerva hardly shows his face before he dies rather than live under Caligula’s rule; John Steiner, as Caligula’s gaunt minister Longinus, is clearly dubbed but a memorable presence.
There are individual scenes which work well: Caligula bestowing the “imperial blessing” on a newly married couple, a scene which sails past sensationalism into showing the absolute cruelty of fascism; Caligula finding himself in a Roman jail, where the inmates seem freer than the free citizens outside; Caligula staging an invasion of “Britain” which amounts to attacking a lake and harvesting its weeds; and Caligula leading the guests at a banquet in a game of “Simon Says,” with dire consequences for those who fail.
Add to that Donati’s expansive sets (don’t forget the huge beheading machine), the new score by Troy Sterling Nies which fits the film well, even if it’s less memorable than the classical themes used in the Guccione cut, the new animated prologue which sets the scene pretty well and the restraint shown by The Ultimate Cut in Drusilla’s death scene – it’s far less transgressive than Guccione’s version – and you’ve got something far closer to a good film than what was unleashed upon the world over 40 years ago. That’s not to say it is good, however; it’s a noble attempt, which is to say a noble failure.
Score: 63