This one is weird yet intriguing. First off let me say that Orson Welles is probably more in love with himself than a nomal person should be. Then again Orson Welles never was considered a normal person.
So this is a pseudo documentary that tells the story of Elmyr De Hory, and Clifford Irving. De Hory who was the probably the world's greatest art forger, (a concept I'm not sure I completely understand, I mean does he copy existing paintings by famous artists or does he make new ones that LOOK like some famous artist painted them? Yeah...probably the second one...thanks for giving me the time to work/type this out) and Irving who wrote De Hory's biography, and then in later years lied about getting permission from the recluse Howard Hughes to write his biography and publish it (see the upcoming film "The Hoax" starring Richard Gere as Irving...it tells the whole story).
Anyway the plot aside this film despite it's awful 70's audio dubbing and the presence of O.W.'s lame 70's girlfriend is way ahead of it's time in terms of its' non-linear editing and storytelling. The theme I enjoyed most about the film however, is that we put way too much stock in so called "experts". For example in the film they site that of the majority of art experts who examined De Hory's forgeries of artists like Picasso, almost none of them could tell that they were fake.
I think this film makes a brilliant point. What is an expert? What makes a critic right?
