F for Fake (1973)

          By the ’70s, faded auteur Orson Welles seemed to embrace the vagabond quality of his career, throwing together haphazard film projects while making his primary income through demeaning acting jobs, cartoon voiceovers, and commercials. For instance, while appearing onscreen as the host/narrator of his documentary F for Fake, Welles explains that some of the footage comprising the brief movie was originally intended for other, never-completed projects. This revelation warns viewers that coherence should not be expected, and, indeed, F for Fake is completely scattershot.

          The movie is ostensibly an examination of pranksters that focuses on Welles’ European acquaintance Elmyr de Hory, an art forger, and Elmyr’s American-born biographer, Clifford Irving—who, in the course of this documentary’s protracted production, earned notoriety by publishing a biography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes that turned out to be bogus. For the first hour of F for Fake, Welles and his editors jump around restlessly between interviews with Elmyr and Irving; footage of Elmyr painting; vignettes of Welles talking about Elmyr and Irving while Welles holds court at cocktail parties; scenes of Welles reviewing footage in an editing room; and other random bits, like cameos from Welles’ Hollywood pals Joseph Cotten and Laurence Harvey. Oh, and there’s also room in the movie’s undisciplined first hour for remarks about Welles’ notorious 1939 radio broadcast War of the Worlds, itself a famous example of fakery.

          After the Elmyr-Irving bit runs its course, Welles transitions to a lengthy dramatization of an encounter between European beauty Oja Kodar and legendary Spanish painter Pablo Picasso. (Welles’ filmmaking is particularly ingenious during this sequence, because he simulates Picasso’s presence through the use of still photographs and clever editing.) F for Fake is filled with fascinating ideas and inventive execution, but it’s maddeningly unfocused. The film never lands on solid narrative ground, and Welles often resorts to gimmicky motifs like recurring cutaways to spilled wine.

          As a result, it’s difficult to grasp just what Welles is trying to say here. Although he announces at the beginning of the film that F for Fake will be an examination of prevarication, it actually ends up being a celebration of elaborate lies by a man who relishes his own ability to twist the truth. F for Fake is highly watchable, but it also provides a sad reminder of the great work Welles could have been doing at this time of his life, instead of assembling unsatisfying pastiches like this one.

F for Fake: FUNKY

Bugs Bunny: Superstar (1975)

          You might think a fluffy documentary tracing the origins of a popular cartoon character could evade controversy. You’d be wrong. Although it only includes about 30 minutes of original material (the rest of the movie comprises full-length vintage cartoons), Bugs Bunny: Superstarmanaged to aggravate long-simmering tensions among the mad geniuses behind Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, Porky, and the other Looney Tunes mainstays. Watching the movie today, it’s not hard to see why—Bob Clampett, one of several prolific Looney Tunes directors, hosts the movie in scripted sequences that suggest he single-handedly oversaw the creation of every major character. Considering the equally important roles of animators including Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones, Clampett’s amiably megalomaniacal dominance of Bugs Bunny: Superstar is a major disservice to film history. However, if you can tolerate Clampett’s inexplicable narcissism, Bugs Bunny: Superstar is mildly entertaining.

          The documentary bits, which are narrated by Orson Welles, feature Clampett in an office filled with artifacts like animation cels and character-model statues. He shares interesting trivia, such as the number of cels used in an average ’40s Looney Tune—10,000 drawings for seven minutes of screen time—and he introduces wonderful home-movie footage of the animators who kept “Termite Terrace,” the building on the Warner Bros. lot where the ’toons were made, lively. Clampett’s contemporaries, including Freleng and Jones, appear during brief interview clips, mostly spewing platitudes about how much they enjoyed the working environment at Termite Terrace, so Clampett—with his loud, patch-covered windbreaker and his helmet-like hairpiece—emerges as the only memorable non-animated figure. (Even voice actor Mel Blanc and music composer Carl Stalling, both of whom were crucial to the greatness of Looney Tunes, are relegated to sidekick status.)

          As for the shorts featured in the movie, they’re okay—although even mediocre Looney Tunes are entertaining, Clampett-directed work is favored to a fault. (Seriously, where are the Chuck Jones-helmed masterpieces including What’s Opera, Doc?) Anyway, while Bugs Bunny: Superstar wasn’t actually produced by Warner Bros., Warner Bros. built on the documentary’s minor success by making additional Looney Tunes anthologies, beginning with the 1979 release The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, a compilation flick assembled by Jones; further anthology pictures were released in the ’80s. As for Bugs Bunny: Superstar, it’s best viewed today as an interesting museum piece, since various DVD bonus-feature docs produced by Warner Bros. in the 2000s tell the Looney Tunes story with greater accuracy.

Bugs Bunny: Superstar: FUNKY

Catch-22 (1970)

          Director Mike Nichols once described the “green awning effect” of becoming a successful auteur. By notching two huge successes in the late ’60s, Nichols convinced Hollywood he knew how to connect with audiences. To test his newfound power, Nichols pitched a movie about a green awning outside a building—the movie would simply show the awning so viewers could watch different people pass underneath. According to Nichols, some executives actually expressed interest in this awful idea because they were so hungry to be in the Mike Nichols business.

          The “green awning effect” helps explain why Paramount Pictures gave Nichols a then-massive $17 million budget to adapt Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel Catch-22. A dreamlike satire of military bureaucracy and the inherent madness of war, the book features a disjointed timeline and a large cast of characters, so Catch-22 is the quintessential “unfilmable” novel. Nonetheless, Nichols and his Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry took a crack at the material, imposing a linear narrative by focusing on the many attempts of Captain Yossarian (Alan Arkin) to escape his duty as a World War II bomber pilot stationed on an island in the Mediterranean.

          Specifically, the movie’s storyline explores Yossarian’s frustration with the length of his military tour and the “catch-22” rule that prohibits him from quitting. A “catch-22” is a guideline whose pretzel logic makes resolution impossible, so Yossarian can’t claim that bombing runs are driving him mad, because the Army declares that anyone capable of recognizing his own insanity must be sane and therefore suitable for combat.

          Unfortunately, the movie itself gets caught in a catch-22: Since the lack of a conventional structure is what makes Heller’s novel work, any attempt to align the book’s events into a straight-ahead progression inherently reduces the novel’s power. Worse, the movie of Catch-22 is a discombobulated mess from a tonal perspective, careering recklessly between absurdist jokes and somber tragedy. Yet Nichols’ massive ambition is not resigned to storytelling, because he also strives to outdo Orson Welles in terms of outlandishly complex tracking shots. Some of Nichols’ images are startling, like unbroken takes in which actors are synchronized with explosions and plane movements, but they make Nichols seem like a cocky show-off. For a director whose incisive focus on character is considered a key virtue, succumbing to auteur hubris is especially embarrassing.

          It doesn’t help that the “comedy” Henry and Nichols put onscreen is more strange than funny; in a typical scene, a military functionary laments that a particular soldier has been killed because it says so on a clipboard, even though the soldier is standing right next to him and repeatedly announcing that he’s alive. Given that Catch-22 came out the same year as the incendiary military satire M*A*S*H, this sort of Brechtian contrivance feels outdated.

          Despite such massive problems, Catch-22 is never boring. The widescreen cinematography by David Watkin is beautiful, with abstract images like a horrific death scene immediately burning themselves into viewers’ brains. (Believe me, if you see the movie, you’ll know which scene.) Furthermore, the cast is impressive, even though actors drift in and out of the movie so randomly that they can’t deliver full-blooded performances.

          Among the most prominent actors, Martin Balsam plays a hard-driving commander, Bob Newhart plays a nervous subordinate, Anthony Perkins plays a compassionate chaplain, and Jon Voight plays a wheeling-and-dealing first lieutenant. Others in the sprawling ensemble include Richard Benjamin, Norman Fell, Art Garfunkel, Jack Gilford, Charles Grodin, Paula Prentiss, and Martin Sheen. Screenwriter Henry pulls double-duty by playing a supporting role, and the director in whose shadow Nichols walks, Orson Welles, shows up for a few scenes as a blustery general.

          Catch-22 is a fascinating case study in what happens when a director is given carte blanche, but despite consistently glorious production values and momentary flashes of brilliance, the movie can best be described as a beautiful disaster.

Catch-22: FREAKY