What is real and what is art? Is putting together one part of a movie that is depicting a con artist and then making the second half about something else ... fake? Like is this a real movie/documentary? Will this entice you? Will it bore or annoy you? I have to admit the movie goes to lengths ... Orson Welles has shown that he can be a genius behind and in front of the camera. And in some sense he is proving it here too.

Maybe this is missunderstood (by me and some others) or maybe others are interpreting too much into certain things. It is certainly a movie ... or is it? The only thing that is for sure is that this will split those who watch it ... you can't just watch it and not feel something ... either in a positive way or negative way. The effects do not always help or have not aged that well. While it is I guess a nice thing that Picasso did not object to being "involved" in the movie, it is painfully obvious they are using a picture of him and he is not actually in the movie.

Now you may care or not about things like that, but since he is being made a part of one of the stories here ... I think it is imperative that you should know how you feel about something like that. F is not just for fake ... but also Film! And Fan - which if you are, anything I wrote will not matter to you.

A documentary about fraud and fakery, which focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger.

Clifford Irving is something of a legend, and definitely belongs in this film for his work as author of a fraudulent Howard Hughes authorized biography. This film purports that Irving and deHory both worked their schemes from the same tiny island, and yet were in no way connected.

Sadly, De Hory would commit suicide a few years after the release of Welles' film, on hearing that Spain had agreed to turn him over to the French authorities.

"F for Fake" faced widespread popular rejection. Critical reaction ranged from praise to confusion and hostility, with many finding the work to be self-indulgent and/or incoherent. "F for Fake" has grown somewhat in stature over the years as cinephiles revere almost anything the notorious filmmaker made.

The question remains: how much of this film itself is true or just one big hoax?

In a perfect metaphor for what transpires today in the realm of 'fake news', I caught this Orson Welles picture the other day, intrigued by the title but having no idea what it was about. Welles himself introduces the story, positioned as magician, charlatan and a fake himself, and as the picture proceeds, one begins to wonder how much of it is real and how much might have been fabricated given the nature of the set up. Primarily, it's the story of Elmyr de Hory, self described and notably regarded as the greatest art forger in the history of the world. His renditions of Modigliani, Picasso and a host of other famous artists appeared to be so genuine that they managed to fool even the 'experts'. Probably my biggest takeaway from the film was de Hory's contention that 'experts' were highly overrated, a feeling I've maintained for the longest time because so often they've been proven wrong. Think of stock market analysts, professional pollsters or political pundits, wrong every day of the week and never held to account. It makes me crazy.

Adding to the surreal nature of the story is the involvement of author Clifford Irving, himself a fraudster of undisputed merit over the Howard Hughes biography affair of the early Seventies. Irving held the world in thrall as Hughes denounced him and sued his publisher before the truth came out. Welles, no stranger to transposing fiction for fact, includes snippets of his 'War of the Worlds' radio hoax in 1938. I've often wondered how I might have reacted if I'd been born early enough to hear that broadcast. I'd like to believe I wouldn't have been taken in by it, but who's to say; I heard a recreation of it once, and without commercial breaks, it sounded like it could have been on the up and up.

When I initially started watching this film, I almost gave up on it when I realized it wasn't going to be a 'real' movie, but then thought 'what the heck'. Elmyr de Hory did seem like a fascinating character, the kind of person I would personally avoid like the plague, but he did have a compelling insight regarding his philosophy about forged art. He said that if they hung around long enough, they would become real. You almost can't argue with logic like that.