F for Fake (Vérités et Mensonges)

For my next experiment, ladies and gentlemen...

I would appreciate the loan of any small personal object from your pocket —

a key or a box of matches, a coin.

Ah, a key it is. Good sir. Hold it up 10 feet over your head.

And watch out for the slightest hint of hanky-panky.

And behold, before our very eyes...

a transformation.

We've changed your key...

into a coin.

What happened to the key? It's been returned to you.

Look closely, sir. You'll find the key...

back in your pocket.

May we see it, please?

Up to your old tricks, I see.

Why not? I'm a charlatan.

What's that, sir? Did I used to be a magician?

Sir, I'm still working on it.

As for the key, it was not symbolic of anything.

This isn't that kind of movie.

You'll find the coin now in your pocket, Sir.

Keep your eyes on that coin, sir...

while it's returned to you as your key.

Shall we return you to your mother? is this your mother? No, of course not.

Open your mouth, wide...

ana we'll return you your money.

And by the way, have you ever heard of Robert-Houdin?

Speaking of magicians, I mean? No, of course not.

But of course you do know my partner, Frangois Reichenbach?

Hello.

Houdlin was the greatest magician who ever lived.

And do you know what he said?

"A magician," he said, "is just an actor."

Well, good luck to you.

Just an actor playing the part of a magician.

- Very nice. - And she's fabulously rich too.

- There's a good story about it. - Do you want to tell it?

We'll come to that one later.

No, it's time for an introduction.

Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction...

Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction...

this is a film about trickery and fraud...

about lies.

Tell it by the fireside or in @ marketplace or in a movie...

almost any story is almost certainly...

some kind of lie.

But not this time. No, this is a promise.

During the next hour, everything you'll hear from us is really true...

and based on solid facts.

You don't talk about Napoleon or Julius Caesar.

- You're talking about Elmyr. - Elmyr?

- ElImyr? - Who is Elmyr?

That question has yet to be answered with any real precision.

- Can I kiss you too? - Certainly.

Anybody want to eat?

In the world of the jet-setters, among us beautiful people...

everybody knows Elmyr, but Elmyr what?

- He has about 60 time the same name. - De Hory?

He's called his name Hory, Heury, Bory, Sury, Kury, Bury, Dury — All the —

With put U-R-Y. Sixty names.

- His real name was Elmyr Ferenc Huffman. - Then 60 personalities...

as much lies and as much real.

Well, it sounds very jesuitic.

Yes, his world is a world of make-believe.

- I'm not an actor. - Not an actor? Elmyr?

I'm not an actor.

I am not a professional actor.

He's a leading actor in this movie.

His profession, it's true, is painting — painting rakes.

Among all fakers, Elmyr is number two.

Once I saw a man from Ibiza...

writing a book on fake, who came to see me to Paris.

He said, "I heard you are the first man who bought an Elmyr."

- And that man's name was — - Clifford Irving.

The important distinction to make when you're talking about...

the genuine quality of a painting...

is not so much whether it's a real painting or a fake.

It's whether it's a good fake or a bad fake.

Her name...

is Oja, Oja Kodar.

And this, by the way, is from quite another film...

a sequence on the fine outdoor sport of girl-watching.

Our sneaky crew of cameramen hidden away

in camouflaged trucks and packing boxes...

arranged for her to act for them.

To act as bait.

You see how it worked.

The entire cast...

all the performers, except one...

acting away like crazy for us without getting paid for It...

without even knowing they were movie actors.

Mama mia!

- Simple larceny. Well, maybe not simple. - Mama mia!

That year nothing was simple...

least of all the larceny.

Now in this little gag, Lawrence Harvey...

our leading man from yet another movie...

couldn't arrange space for Miss Kodar on a plane.

Well, there's no room in this movie to tell you why in that other one...

we squeezed Miss Koadar into a more convenient size for traveling...

by a magical illusion.

But you really must believe that what comes afterwards is solid fact.

Yes, after this bit of hocus-pocus, the next thing we heard about her...

was not as an actress...

but as the leading figure in a notorious swindle.

I took another plane, grew another beard...

made another movie and well before Miss Kodar —

We'll leave Miss Kodar aside for the moment.

But in case that mumbo jumbo might make it seem...

that there's going to be some trickery in this film about trickery...

we'll repeat our promise...

in writing.

The girl-watching was evidence of how much of all this was filmed...

in blissful ignorance of the facts...

about some of the various characters...

who found their way in front of our cameras.

Well, Clifford Irving told the story in the book.

Maybe.

Well, by now, you understand, I'd fallen in with Frangois.

And on the island of Ibiza...

we'd fallen smack into the biggest series of scandals...

in the whole history of hoaxing.

It was a pretty queer experience to start making yet another movie...

and end up making yet another...

with a story line rotten with coincidence.

For instance, that the author of Fake!, a book about a faker...

was himself a faker and the author of a fake to end all fakes —

and that he must have been cooking it up when we were filming him.

- Well. - Quiet, please. Edith Irving.

Take three.

Look, you've known Elmyr longer than anyone else on this island.

Do you really believe he did all those fakes?

- No, I really don't believe it. - Sorry.

I've been jumping around like this because that's the way it was.

- Clifford Irving, take two. -

Let's pull ourselves together if we can and begin at the beginning.

Now, on this tablecloth, which is decorated with a map, is where everything —

- - Which I've just loused up with some wine.

But I understand wine brings good luck behind the ear.

Well, we can use a little luck anywhere.

And here is — I'll have to mark it in.

On this tiny island is where the two great hoaxes were hatched — Ibiza.

One island, two Ibizas.

The serious, indeed, the very sober part...

is part of Spain.

And the other, "An island in the sun," Life magazine calls it...

'Where restless souls may find each other."

The restless souls being, I guess...

Cliff Irving, over there —

and Elmyr.

Coincidence number one: that these two world leaders in fakery...

operated, quite separately, on the same tiny island.

That's Mrs. Irving. Elmyr and Mrs. Irving.

Clifford Irving, who declared that he himself...

had delivered to Howard Hughes or his aides...

the quarter of a million dollars publisher's advance...

suddenly confessed foday that Mrs. Irving...

is the same Helga R. Hughes wanted by the police —

"If Clifford dragged Edith into this," said Elmyr...

"I spit on his face."

This was later, of course, when everything was finally hanging out...

or as much of it as I guess any of us will ever get to see.

And then we had to stop these Moviolas, use them as time machines...

and then roll back and come in again...

to the days when Clifford Irving, as far as any of us knew...

was just a researcher info someone else's fakery.

And now for the truth, Clifford.

We'd like to ask you a few question.

My personal feelings about Elmyr are... very mixed.

He has developed a fiction about his life...

and to destroy that fiction...

would tear down the whole castle that he's built...

of his illusions.

The illusion, for example, that he has not broken any law.

As long as people enjoy it...

and it gives them pleasure, why shouldn't they have it?

The illusion that the world has always taken advantage of him.

- Why they shouldn't have it? Why? - If you were to put it to Elmyr...

that he had taken advantage of the world...

that he had cheated people, he'd be horrified.

These two have made each other famous.

They have much in common.

- one of them is talent. -

Well, let's start again.

We'll patch this film together...

and we'll try to patch together Elmyr's version of this story.

I came to Ibiza in 1959...

after I found certain aspects of my life in America...

becoming too difficult.

I wandered around Europe for a time.

I eventually came here. I liked life here.

I liked the island. I liked the atmosphere. I liked the people.

And so I decided that is the place where I want to settle.

The island is, uh, simpatico...

as they say in Chinese.

There is always a group of interesting people here.

Uh, I find the people amusing.

Sandy, come and say something witty.

Ibiza is not a place for snobbish society.

It's not London. It's not Paris. It's nof Omaha.