April Fools’ Day is not especially well-liked, at least if you, too, don’t understand the appeal in whatever opportunity websites take to post idiotic, fake news items — “Zack Snyder Directing Star Wars Spinoff After Justice League” psych! gotcha! owned! — and reap a couple of clicks before everyone just moves on with their day. And trickery can be such fun! Notwithstanding the fact that just about every film ever made is the result of many illusions stacked on top of each other, those few that properly manipulate the boundaries between representation and understanding can work themselves to ends so sublime that they feel like an apotheosis of film art.
Rather than burdening readers with a link to some “story” about Hong Sang-soo becoming Marvel Studios’ new creative chief, we’ll use this day to celebrate Orson Welles‘ F for Fake, a documentary-of-sorts in which the filmmaker walks us through stories of forgery, fraud, and deception, each tidbit amazing and, better yet, true — until they aren’t. The film inspires a rabid love in most who’ve seen it, nowadays perhaps best evidenced by a collection of video essays and remembrances from the likes of Peter Bogdanovich. They’ve been included here, along with Welles’ legendary nine-minute trailer — a largely original work that advertises the movie’s sense of mischief as much as the movie itself.
But it might help to watch the thing first. Provided one has a Hulu subscription, you can stream F for Fake below and then go into the details — or, conversely, just jump in here and admire Welles’ genius from a slight distance. (Somewhat expectedly, the trailer loses nothing.) Even that is a fine path: if nothing else, it’ll really, really make you want to see the film for yourself.