I personally think this documentary is just as fake as the people in it. So when Vincent Canby says Welles is accountable for everything, I think what he means is that he has to choose one side or another and stick with it. Meaning if he is a fake and the people in the film are fakes he can’t go ahead and confess all of it because then there will be no mystery and he will be held accountable for nothing.

It could also be a statement of intent to question the nature of cinema and authorship, storytelling and illusion. The confesses is all fake which Welles show an honest and provocative declaration of the art is fake.

That embodiment of his material can make him hyper-accountable. He blurred the usual line between artist and subject.

Welles states within the film that “for the next hour everything you hear from us is really true and solid facts.” At the same time the first thing mentioned before this was that this movie is about trickery and deception. He says one thing and then says another. That’s what a magician does; they make you look at one thing when the real thing you should be watching is happening away from your focused eye. Honestly, I don’t think this movie takes itself seriously and that’s the fun of it all. I would say Welles is accountable for the film as a whole, after all this is what he shot and edited to be presented to the viewer, but I don’t really think Welles really cared about the accountability of the facts because in the end, this movie is about the deception and that’s what makes it so much fun.

Welles’ confession makes F for Fake out of the documentary mode, and Welles is not restricted to the responsibility of documentary filmmakers that he has to present truth.

If he is accountable for everything, it means that he did not succeed in his deception and trickery. I think most of his trickery comprises of keeping people focused on other people and their lies as opposed ti his. However, If he confesses, he saves face, and people still respect him enough to claim his work as art.

can or cannot be trusted.

The definition for charlatan is “a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.” Therefore, Welles is admitting he is a liar and therefore, he cannot be accountable for anything he says later on because we are supposed to assume he might be lying. However, by saying he is a charlatan, it makes us believe that Welles can look critically at himself and admit the truth about his own personality and character. Therefore, couldn’t the idea he is trying to show, be just as candid as his criticism of himself.

The first four paragraphs tell us the Welles is planned, fixed, meditated, masterly, and a deceiver perhaps. We know by the first four paragraphs that Welles’s scenes are obviously staged and so is the narration. Canby imposes that it is sometimes fun to be fooled and know that you are being fooled. This suggests that it could sometimes be less fun to know that you are fooled. So all in all the mysteriousness of Welles’s film adds excitement and also evokes questioning.

as well as being “fake.”

I get a sense that he is very sneaky. The fact that he is open about his fakery makes it even more difficult to figure him out. You can easily tell if a person is being manipulative and crazy if they don’t say so themselves; but Mr. Welles is fully aware of his fakery, so you get a feeling that you dont know where you have him. He sure is a master of disguise – a man with multiple identities that adapt to his surroundings.

The first four paragraphs tell the reader that Orson Welles isn’t the person you should trust because of his attitude and demeanor. It also suggests that Welles has perfected the act of deceiving, which in turn means that he’s good at making people believe him. But no matter how truthful he sounds, it’s still a lie (or not the full truth).

The first sequence features Welles performing some slight of hand trickery for children in a railway station, mesmerizing them with his voice as much as with his hands, a classic example of the magician’s art of misdirection. The viewer is pulled into the act and becomes a kind of accomplice, a willing participant dazzled by the show and taken in by the banter.He places all the evidence in front of the viewer’s eye, and goes on to make them forget all the evidence they’ve seen by focusing on a distraction.

It may be the allusion to Anna Karenina that makes me think of the word ‘suave’, but the opening paragraphs definitely make me think of a tall, dark, and handsome man in a trench coat with a lot of charm. That’s not what Welles looks like, but the image that Canby presents originally.

Welles admits to being a ‘charlatan’, which shows his confidence. He knows what he is and he isn’t scared to say it. Also the idea that Welles used a railroad station that ‘romantics cherish’ makes his charm even more apparent.

He’s able to play around with the child, entertaining him with the key and coin. Welles doesn’t seem like the kind of guy that parents would want their child around, but the child is still intrigued. That just seems like the kind of personality and image that Welles has judging by these first paragraphs.

Just like the beginning and the ending of the film, Welles uses magic to give an example of how people like to be fooled. We still want to watch the magician fooling us even though we know that is fake. Just like this film, the name of the film already told us it’s fake, but we liked the feeling of trusting the story.

Welles is so free with his fakery that there isn’t much suspense, aside from the fact of him telling the truth or not

The mentioning of both how he used the location in this film in another film, and his explaining of the key not symbolizing anything besides it being a key, I feel, is kind of an allusion to the fact that this isn’t your average Orson Welles movie. At the same time, the mentioning and use of these things also lets the audience know that yes, this is an Orson Welles film. This is a very different type of movie then he had ever shot before, and that’s even after the fact that this was his first time directing a “documentary.” There’s also a very personal feel to it by the use of the location as well as him being himself and acknowledging the audience outright, especially the part about the movie, and by extension him, being filled with trickery and deception.

He is an experienced director who has the ability to play with film genres, and he knows people certainly will have fun discovering F for Fake especially since he told us it is fakery right at the beginning.

He doesn’t give much of anything away. Almost everything he says is preceded by a statement that contradicts it, or questions it. That very nature of explaining is a hint to how he is able to trick people so easily.

I think the reviewer is capturing the trickery of Welles’s film and including it in the review. He himself might not even know if the film is a set up or if it is real. Or maybe he does know and wants us to figure it out for ourselves.

While at the same time removing his thoughts and opinions of Welles

The reviewer loves to portray his own opinions about the film, and not paying too much attention to what he thinks of Mr. Welles. He’s mainly concerned with the film and not his own personal opinion about Mr. Welles.

Magic a contradiction of reality and of expectations. It’s hard to understand and comprehend and the answers are left up to imagination. Canby is to F for Fake as the audience is to a magician. They aren’t totally sure what to think, or how to react, but they do their best to grasp what they’ve just seen. Canby is unable to completely process how he sees the film as a reviewer.

It’s Real because it’s a movie that plays around fake. Welles uses the whole plot to show us a form of fake. Also, the actions thats been shot are something that actually happened.

It leads back to the debate of real and fake from Nanook of the North: the hunting scene set-up. Aren’t the re-creations of fake events make the events real because they are actually happening in front of cameras? The reviewer keeps contradicting himself makes his readers bring a perspective to the film that we hope to solve the contradictions by watching the film.

Welles’ way of tricking is open and conniving, so by contradicting himself, the reviewer allows himself a few moments to bask in the humor of having people guess at what he is trying to say, like an audience would guess at what a magician is trying to do.

Welles is interesting in Irving because they share the same interests, which is trickery. Welles is documenting a film on trickery, and Irving wrote a documentary called “Fake” on De Hory in Ibiza. I think that the reviewer is not as enthusiastic about Irving as Welles because they are less important to him than Welles. This is clearly expressed as Canby refers to him as a small potato.

so his only concern is with Welles with whom his review is about.

Canby calling Mr. Irving “small potatoes” because Irving is insignificant of making it big time ccompare to Welles.

Welles is interested in Irving because they share them same interest in trickery. Welles trickery is in how he edits and composes his documentary films to trick and convince the audience. Irving as well has created documentary films to about how fake De Hory is. The reviewer isn’t interested in the two of them because he only writes about his main interest, which is Welles.

The reviewer seems to disrespect the notion of fakery and considers trickery as more inferior than the real.