F for Fake and the Essay Film Genre

Few filmmakers are as revered as Orson Welles. He made what is thought by some to be the best film ever made when he was 26. From then on, he was on a downfall of a sort. Not in his own eyes, but in the eyes of others he fell from grace. This view is a sort of detached view. In his first film, though later lauded by many, he failed. He was personally attacked in a way. William Randolph Hearst, legendary newspaper publisher, was the basis for Citizen Kane, Welles' masterpiece, threatened each theater that ran the film and nearly had the negatives burned before the film was even released.

With being Hollywood's, Broadway's, and radio's golden boy behind him, Welles travelled the world trying to find financing for his many adaptations of Shakespeare.

What I'd like to focus on, however, are his last two films. Welles created, seemingly, a new genre with these two films. The films, F for Fake and Filming Othello, are occasionally categorized as documentaries, but that would mean that Welles was documenting something. In a way in F for Fake, he is, for part of the film. It is a document on an art forger, and then a biographical forger by way of the art forger, but that's just part one.

To take F for Fake as a whole, one would have to take the last 25 minutes or so, which are (spoiler) fictitious! This therefore disqualifies the film as a documentary. What the film is, is an essay film. Less a film journalist turning his camera on a story and more an author telling the audience his thoughts on the subject of forgery, fakery and all around illusion. Welles even begins the film as one might begin a regular essay, establishing his mastery of the subject by demonstrating his own magic tricks.

Filming Othello on the other hand is entirely an essay film, without argument for categorization as documentary. Othello is less a document and more an artist explaining himself. Even on his last film potentially the greatest film artist to live felt he needed to explain himself. That's the kind of essay I want to see.