Fraud Alert
2 Episodes
Samuel Fuller and Orson Welles bring a mischievous sleight of hand to these slippery accounts of some of history’s most notorious scammers, cheats, and cons. Based on a stranger-than-fiction true story, Fuller’s offbeat western-noir gem THE BARON OF ARIZONA stars Vincent Price at his unctuous best as a nineteenth-century master swindler who hatches a devious scheme to steal the Arizona Territory for himself. Then, Welles pulls off the ultimate cinematic magic trick in his slyly inventive essay film F FOR FAKE, a meta-documentary investigation of art, truth, and illusion that is itself an elaborately constructed puzzle-box of duplicities and deceptions.
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1:37:07Episode 1The Baron of Arizona
Episode 1
Directed by Samuel Fuller • 1950 • United States
In one of his own favorite roles, Vincent Price portrays legendary swindler James Addison Reavis, who in 1880 concocted an elaborate and dangerous hoax to name himself the "Baron" of Arizona, and therefore inherit all the land in the state. Samuel...
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1:28:43Episode 2F for Fake
Episode 2
Directed by Orson Welles • 1975 • France, Iran, Germany
Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In F FOR FAKE, a free-form sort-of documentary by Orson Welles, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous lines between illu...