If you love movies about art forgery, please look somewhere else because this is not it. A trainwreck of bad sound, editing, and terrible narration by a very unpleasant looking old white guy. Takes a compelling story and utterly ruins it. Very dissapointing.
Real Fake: The Art, Life & Crimes of Elmyr De Hory
2017
Action / Documentary
Real Fake: The Art, Life & Crimes of Elmyr De Hory
2017
Action / Documentary
Plot summary
Walk into any of the world's museums or art auction houses, and you have good reason to doubt your own eyes. Is that Picasso real? Did Modigliani really paint that masterpiece? The answer may be no. These works could very well be the hand of one of history's most versatile and prolific art forger-Elmyr de Hory. 40-years after Elmyr's death, Filmmaker Jeff Oppenheim ("Funny Valentine," Universal Pictures, "A Passion for Giving," PBS) embarks on a re-examination of the facts of the case. A cadre of art experts discuss the issue of forgery within the art market at large, while a team of investigators dig into the life, art and crimes of this enigmatic forger. Assuming all previous information known about this forger might be as "wrong" as his art, the team examines the provenance, forensics and connoisseurship of Elmyr de Hory. Together they cut through a myriad of aliases, searching for never-before-revealed archival records, police files and personal remembrances of those that knew him. In the center of it all is a magnificent trail of evidence-a bedazzling treasure trove of original impressionist and post impressionist masterpieces estimated to number in the thousands and potentially now worth billions. All Fake.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
avert your eyes
Real Fake: The Art, Life and Crimes of Elmyr de Hory,
What is art, what is authenticity? These are just a few of the questions that you find yourself immersed in while watching Real Fake. What is the value of art when even the experts can't tell what's real and what's fake. If the art is beautiful does it matter that Renoir didn't really paint it? de Hory created the most puzzling paradox the art world ever saw. Decades after his desk art experts are still struggling to separate the masterpieces he created from the ones created by the actual masters. I doubt even Sherlock Holmes could solve this one.
Another Real Fake
There has been a rash of recent films about art forgers, so I have been watching all of them because the topic intrigues me. The stories all have interesting parallels but are distinguished by the particular artist´s own eccentricities. Elmyr De Hory´s story is truly fascinating. He was quite the playboy (albeit gay) and was hanging out in Ibiza with all sorts of outcasts during the height of his success. Like Beltracchi, Ribes, and Landis, De Hory created fakes, not exact copies of existent works. So he, too, knew a lot about the history of art and had a lot of technical savvy. Unlike the others, De Hory does not seem ever to have developed his own style, and sadly he committed suicide when he came to believe (erroneously) that he was about to be extradited for his crimes. Apparently many of his works are lurking still in great museums and private collections, with people too terrified to subject their possessions to rigorous analysis for fear that they may prove to have been among the dupes. Eventually the truth will emerge, when someone tries to sell the works, as usually happens, sooner or later. Like Beltracchi, De Hory was ultimately caught because he used a titanium white paint not available at the opening of the twentieth century and so which could not have been used by the French painters he regularly faked.
I enjoyed this film. There was very little time spent with De Hory himself, who comes off as an elusive character, which seems fitting since he lived a double life, in the shadows...