The Trial (1962) User Reviews

The Logic of a Nightmare

[snazel · 9/10 · 16 January 2002]

The story of The Trial is the story of displacement. The protagonist in the film Josef K, (played by Anthony Perkins), is seemingly from another world. His morality, conduct and philosophy contrast so sharply from the nightmare around him, that one wonders if he was transported to another universe while sleeping. As a result, Josef K has no survival skills in his environment and his adherence to a personal morale code that is totally alien to the world he lives in, consummates his destruction.

Josef K literally awakes in the first scene, to a nightmare that he cannot understand, because his own sense of justice refuses to let him understand it. This is Josef K's downfall. There are survivors in the world painted by this film, grim survivors to be sure, but survivors none the less. Josef K is not one of them.

Josef K, in the context that surrounds him in this film, is dysfunctional. He has neither the character nor the experience to survive in his world. He seems oblivious to the lunacy of his environment and strives for something so completely alien, that one wonders where and how he even conceived of his morale code, given the world he lives in.

This of course, leads to terrific drama and an odd tension for the viewer throughout the entire film. That tension springs from the dichotomy of the film, Josef K's idealism vs. the cruel reality all around him. Perhaps more specifically the tension arises from Josef K's struggle for logic and reason in a world gone haywire with paranoia and corruption.

One of the minor but important strengths of this film is the encapsulation of its theme within the 2-minute anecdote that starts the picture. This prologue uses stark drawings on a wheel to transition from scene to scene and is both a riddle and a parable. It is accompanied by a sinister cello and a deep, cold narration by Orson Welles. The anecdote in the prologue is a tale of a man who 'seeks admittance to the law'. The riddle that is laid before him ends in death and with the realization that the man wasted his life, seeking a universal truth, to a very personal question.

Much later in the film, the character of the Advocate tries to retell the chilling prologue to Josef K. Josef however, dismisses the fairy-tale immediately. Refusing to hear its lesson and how it applies to his predicament. The advocate rightly notes, from the prologue: 'it has been observed that the man came to the law of his own free will'. What I believe Orson Welles is telling us, in this scene, is he personally believes Josef K's character to be guilty. Josef is not guilty of a crime to be sure, but he is guilty in his conscience. Josef's wretched self-righteousness and guilt-complex is ugly, even within the context of all the injustice, corruption and abuse that surround him.

Josef is weak, stubborn and oblivious and I believe Orson tells us subtly, that perhaps he deserves to die. What is also left unsaid by the Advocate is the man in the prologue willingly submitted himself to the lunacy that became his death. The man felt it better to live chained to an ideal, that to roam free in an unjust world. If there is a crime Josef K is guilty of, then that is likely it.

I have never read the novel, but I believe Josef K, is a much more tragic figure in Kafka's eyes. In the eyes of Orson Welles - it's apparent to me that Orson Welles considers Josef K to be neither tragic nor overly heroic.

While it may contrast strikingly with Kafka's intention, I think Welles tries to illustrate somewhat that Josef K, is not a complete victim. While Josef's surroundings are nightmarish beyond belief, Josef never adapts to them. He never learns how to survive or worse, refuses to learn how to survive. He judges his world but he hardly ever truly interacts with it and he immediately becomes distracted whenever he feels someone has transgressed his moral view of things.

While the actions of Josef K are noble and we sympathize with his plight, you feel little remorse for his eventual death, because Josef quite simply just does not belong. Like the creature at the end of metamorphosis, an innocent thing, is perhaps best left to die, because it is alien to its environment.

Like all good work, that interpretation of mine is open to a lot of debate. Which is another great feature of this film, it provokes a reaction and that reaction can help you understand more about yourself and your current surroundings.

I think this is strong work. Orson Welles finds ways to delight your eyes on screen. Some of the performances like Romy Schneider's performance as the mistress of the Advocate are seductive and chilling.

It is interesting that women in this film are perverted, contorted and shallow. The perversion of society in Josef K's world is so pervasive that his own 16-year-old cousin cannot even visit him, without suspicion from his co-workers. Even sex and passion in this world is twisted into secrecy, innuendo and fear. The only true female survivors in this film are women who willingly cast themselves as supplicants to men of power and intrigue. While this message may affront those who are sensitive, it adds another element to the nightmare that makes this film so strong.

The film has a similar parallel to the Bicycle Thief in my opinion. The protagonist is sympathetic but is surrounded by injustice and cruelty that shreds his very existence. In both films, no amount of effort on the protagonist's behalf will solve his dilemma. Both characters struggle to come to terms with their tragic plight. Like Antonio, Josef K's quest is futile and his only salvation is acceptance. Unlike Antonio however, Josef K never truly transforms, he will not sink to the same level as the world around him. This is why we feel so sorry for Antonio at the end of the Bicycle Thief but see the Trial's ending as more inevitable than tragic.

It is sometimes hard to feel sorry for a martyr who wears his thorny crown so smugly. This is where the protagonist of Josef and Antonio (Bicycle Thief) depart. Josef willingly becomes a self-righteous martyr, while Antonio chooses life, even at the expense of his dignity.

The logic of this film is the logic of a dream and a nightmare. The Trial is a moral nightmare - a world where the only options for survival are: lies, hypocrisy and servitude. A sacrifice, Josef K, refuses to make and so his door closes, forever.

Welles' Trial--Not Kafka's

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 24 January 2000]

It's always a question whether film form should attempt to reproduce literature. Is the film the author's, the director's, or both? With Orson Welles, the question is easily answered. We have Tony Perkins raging against the darkness--walking the dream landscape of a nightmare--spitting in the eye of the law--a victim yet not a victim. He is an existential juggernaut. Unlike the man who waits at the door, he already knows it's his door (he says he knows the story). He knows the door will close, but what happens on his side will be his choice. This is a strange curve to throw, a character devoid of dramatic irony, like Oedipus knowing the Oedipus story. Then there's the asexuality and monomania, the refusal of dissuasion which allows Perkins to "win." Force doesn't affect him. When he is dragged off, we aren't really sure who is doing the dragging. In the book, we know perfectly well. I wonder how Orson Welles would have handled such an arrest.

An Orwellian Nightmare

[OttoVonB · 8/10 · 17 August 2006]

Joseph K. awakes one morning to find the police in his apartment. He is accused and is to be tried. For what offense he knows not. He stumbles across a nightmarish landscape of judicial limbo and cynical survivors, demanding justice...

When one thinks about it carefully, one can only conclude that Orson Welles, more than anyone, was the ideal candidate to adapt Kafka's story. It possesses all his trademarks: nightmarish ambiance, a manipulative power figure (the Advocate, played by Welles himself) and a parade of disconcerting characters that, though absurd, are very telling parables for the human race's shortcomings. Opening with a stunningly drawn introduction, the film truly begins with K. awakening in his bed. It is then a cascade of either virtuoso long takes (with the camera gliding with bewildering grace) and ingenious editing. The camera always conveys a sense of unease and its combination with the Soviet style sets and oppressive geometry further enhance the aura of paranoia.

Of the cast, Anthony Perkins perfectly plays the role of the bewildered accused. He receives solid help from Jeanne Moreau, Max Haufler, Romi Schneider (wonderfully sensual and unhinged), Akim Tamiroff (Joe Grande from "Touch of Evil" and Jackob Zook from "Mr. Arkadin", always a joy to see) and, especially as always, Welles himself. Some may object to the transposition of Kafka's novel to more modern times, but one can not deny that the spirit is perfectly captured. Welles could trick you into believing that The Trial is a story of his invention, but that it is also his most personal film to date. Welles called this film his best to date, perhaps because it was his first completely controlled film in a long time. It is one of his best, however, ranking up there with Chimes at Midnight, Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil and Mr. Arkadin.

One of the best films of all time and certainly one of the most atmospheric.

Beautiful.

[Chromium_5 · 10/10 · 19 January 2004]

After reading some of the other user comments for this movie, I feel a bit out of my league. Unlike the other reviewers, I do not belong to Mensa, and I am not going to even TRY to show how this movie represents "social regimentation" or whatever.

Instead, I am simply going to say what I like best about it: the atmosphere. This is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. Welles did a superb job of capturing an uneasy, nightmarish feeling. The camera angles and perspectives are perfect.

"The Trial" basically consists of scene after scene of surreal settings. We get to see endless rows of people working on typewriters, the inside of a crate while hundreds of eyes peer through the cracks, a labyrinth of tall bookshelves stacked with old law books, and tons of other dark surrealism that is amazing to look at.

As far as plot goes, Anthony Perkins is trapped in a corrupt judicial system, accused of an unspecified crime. He does a great job of making his character a paranoid wreck, and you can't help but feel paranoid yourself while watching the movie. Sometimes there is a spacious atmosphere, and other times it is extremely claustrophobic. And it is all perfectly done in black and white.

I highly recommend watching this, if only to look at the awesome sets. You will think you are in a nightmare yourself.

"The Logic Of A Dream"

[stryker-5 · 29 December 1999]

Franz Kafka was a citizen of the moribund Austro-Hungarian Empire, a dead culture in which mere administration had replaced government. Aware that its civilisation was decaying, the Austrian ruling class of Kafka's day could summon up no vitality or creativity, and devoted itself to suppressing 'The Revolution'. A state with thirteen languages and twice that number of separatist movements spent all its time trying to retard its own centrifugal forces. Austria-Hungary in these final decades was a honeyless hive in which minor officials and secret policemen busied themselves, striving feverishly to preserve the unpreservable. Kafka's dark novels capture the ugly mood of a dying political system whose instincts were authoritarian and whose inefficiency sapped all hope of reform.

In 1962, Welles was struggling through his locust years. Having long since alienated himself from Hollywood's money, he was living a vagabond life in Europe, flitting back and forth across the continent to scrape funds together, plan stage productions which hardly ever came to fruition, and sleepwalk through a dozen cameo roles in other people's films. The critical and financial catastrophe of 'Chimes' was hanging over him like a pall, and he had far too many distractions - squabbles with his Irish partners, tax bills in London and potentially ruinous law suits to stave off. With all this to contend with, he was still sporadically shooting portions of "Don Quixote" in Spain, a stuttering project that was by now in its sixth year of filming. Welles was desperately short of money, and as his biographer Higham puts it, "he could manage almost anything except austerity".

A harmless, inconsequential clerk wakes up one morning to find himself accused of something (he never discovers what). Secret policemen enter his bedroom and subject him to a frightening interrogation in which every answer provokes a new line of questioning. This is psychological torture, the mind's innate sense of justice constantly probing for some higher reference-point, some appeal to fairness, when in fact none exists. Josef K returns repeatedly to the obvious question, "But what have I done?" But there are no rules of justice here, no recourse to an autonomous code of law. "You have the unmitigated gall to pretend you don't know?"

A cry of anguish from the individual who finds himself overwhelmed by soulless bureaucracy, "The Trial" is a deeply personal statement by Welles, and as Higham puts it, "a symbol, if there ever was one, of his own career". Welles had been the enfant terrible whose erratic genius had alienated the big Hollywood studios. Cut off from the big money, he was to spend the subsequent forty years globetrotting aimlessly, picking up work as best he could.

Autobiographical elements of Kafka's own life, contained in "The Trial", are given prominence in the film. Austria-Hungary launched World War One in the same year that Kafka began work on the novel. Ironically, the limited war against Bosnia, intended to restore Austria's international credibility, turned into a conflagration bigger and more horrific than anything previously experienced on earth, and set in train the global violence which was to characterise the twentieth century. It also destroyed Austria-Hungary. Welles closes this story of 1914 with an image of nuclear catastrophe, stressing the oneness of the century's horror. Kafka was bullied by his father, and reference is made in the course of the film to K's sense of filial guilt. The office is depressing and demeaning, echoing Kafka's own experiences as a clerk in a bloated bureaucracy.

The State is remorseless and pitiless, grinding down and perverting even the strongest of human bonds, those of familial and sexual love. K is forced to reject his little cousin Irmie (Maydra Shore), who has to remain 'outside'. Later, an allegation of sexual impropriety concerning Irmie arises. Any magnanimity towards another is interpreted by the authorities as a denunciation. The torture scenes involving the secret policemen are the most disturbing part of the film, both because K realises how his own protests have borne poisoinous fruit, and because of the grinning obsequiousness of the victims. The State turns its problems into spineless curs who acquiesce in their own degradation.

Not only does K find himself becoming an accuser: he even assumes the role of interrogator, questioning Bloch and the Defendants. Anyone who is not a keyholder within the pitiless apparatus of The State cannot help but take on its deadly pallor. Keys are important. Leni, the Court Guard and Zitorelli are empowered through possessing keys. They are a corrupt priesthood in this cult of political disease.

Kafka's experiences with women were deeply ambivalent. He had many intense relationships in his life, none of which proved satisfactory. His book treats women as both temptresses and objects of loathing. Welles follows this line, the women being desirable guide-figures and also deformed monstrosities. The trunk-carrier, Lena and the hunchback girl all have bodily malformations.

Welles shot most of the film in Zagreb, capturing strikingly the two clashing styles of architecture of Mittel-Europa, overblown ugly Habsburg baroque and drab communist functionalism. It is as if the Prague of Mozart cannot help but decay into the Prague of Krushchev. "Ostensibly free" is the best K can hope for, and 'ostensibly individual' is our optimum condition, as the shadows of the Stalinist apartment blocks crowd in on us.

This is how you film a literary classic: not by toadying to it, but by assuming that you created it yourself.

[alice liddell · 10/10 · 18 August 1999]

This is probably Welles' most complete masterpiece since CITIZEN KANE. Not that it's better than AMBERSONS or TOUCH OF EVIL, but there's a wholeness, a freedom from interference, a focusing of vision that's complete. It's also a relief to be able (for once)to enjoy a Welles performance from this period, rather than laughing with him at its crass silliness. Akim Tamiroff is (as ever) extraordinary, while Anthony Perkins captures the mixture of nervousness and arrogance central to Welles' K.

THE TRIAL is also a textbook lesson in how to film a classic text. While cinema thrives on the second-rate, transcending and enriching banality, it tends to founder when it appropriates the Great Works, due in part to the incompatibility of forms, but mostly because of pointless reverence. Why bother being completely faithful to, say, Howard's End, when we can read the book. Surely the only reasons to film a classic are to a)make it adaptable to film form; b)make it relevant to our age; or c)make it relevant to the director's sensibility.

Welles, on one level, is certainly faithful to Kafka's vision. We get a nightmare depiction of bureaucracy gone mad, of the increasing, unidentifiable totalitarianism of modern life, of the persecution of the individual, of the impossibility of rebellion and alternatives. The sense of labyrinth and nightmare, and a desolate world abandoned by God, is chillingly evoked in the film's astonishing visual framework, the hallucinatory set-pieces, the disorientating comedy, the bewildering logic. The knowledge that K.'s workplace was filmed in a disused railway station only adds to the film's complexity - this is a society cut off from other people, ideas, civilisations; one where there is no coming or going, no escape.

And yet Welles subverts all this. By removing Kafka's ambiguity, he makes the work more ambiguous. Unlike the book, Welles draws attention to the fact that this is a nightmare. K. begins the film getting dressed, and ends it stripping, the reverse process of going to sleep (i.e. To move plausibly back from the dream world to reality, K. Has to return to the state that led to dream, unclothed in bed).

The suggestion that his adventures are a dream draws attention to the film's main theme - the dangers of solipsism. K. is a paranoid - because he sees the world only from his point of view, he feels that everyone is out to get him. His selfishness is subtly hinted at throughout the film, by his stated profession not to get involved with anything, to avoid problems, to avoid others' problems, to keep himself to himself, and get on. Of course, this means that no-one will help him, as he finds out throughout the film. And if everybody is indifferent to their neighbour, than no wonder people are burned in death camps. Wasn't that the excuse of 'ordinary' Germans after the war? 'We knew nothing about it'.

That's why well-fed K. With his privileged job, is greeted by a gaunt group of camp victims. Welles has to remould The Trial in the knowledge of the Final Solution. This is accomplished by parodying K.'s us vs. Them outlook,k with a complex doubling pattern - private scenes bursting into mass activity; Dreyeresque austerity alternating with Wellesian baroque; a dynamic jazz score merging into Albinoni's tragic, apocalyptic, funereal Adagio.

Both readings aren't exclusive: they play off each other. Creating an appropriately Kafkaesque spiral of terror, the climactic scene - a classic Wellesian stand-off between K. And the Advocate (seemingly on his side, but really a playful collaborator), completes the dissolution of the individual. They are shown to be indistinguishable, mere shadows of men. I do not say that we fail to sympathise with K. - his light IS harrowing, but though his closing laugh can be interpreted as an admission of the Absurdity of the universe, it's a world made in his image.

Orson Welles's Best Movie

[reader4 · 10/10 · 1 March 2001]

When asked on the IMDb poll to enter the name of my favorite movie, I at first thought it an impossible task. Once this one entered my mind, though, the contest was over.

The lifetime masterpiece of a master of filmmaking, "The Trial" is Orson Welles's finest film, even surpassing "Touch of Evil." Somber, brooding, sometimes even claustrophobic, "The Trial" is a surrealistic safari through the worlds of law, employment and interpersonal relationships.

The melancholy strains of the artistically deployed Adagio by Albinoni underscore the mood of the film, shot mostly at twilight or indoors by night in a tangle of nightmarish sets that extend to infinity. Even scenes shot in broad daylight seem cold and devoid of nourishment in this cosmos of interminable, infinitesimal complexity which utterly lacks a heart.

Anthony Perkins (Joseph K.) is mass of contradictions, at once sympathetic, boyish, paranoid, angry, declamatory and most of all surpassingly frustrated by the futility of attempting to deal with a society that both demands mechanistic perfection of him and at the same time exhibits a persistent apathy toward his continued existence as well as a bureaucratic attempt to destroy it.

He seems inadvertently to hurt everyone with whom he comes in contact, ostensibly the cause of people getting thrown out of their dwellings, schools, jobs, marriages and other situations, all due to his benign actions which in any sane world would be completely unconnected with the tragedies they somehow appear to create. But in the Kafka/Welles society, they just lead to blame and further accusations. In his helplessness, his innocence and his utter bafflement, Perkins is thoroughly disarming.

Welles is positively diabolical as The Advocate, who, like everyone else connected with the Court, is not of any assistance or support to the accused. Rather, he seems to exist only to hurl vague accusations at Joseph K. - which the poor man is somehow expected to understand beforehand and even think are justified - and to exact payment for same.

Romy Schneider is outstanding as The Advocate's cook/housekeeper/nursemaid/concubine, the only person in the story who shows Joseph K. any genuine affection, odd though the form it takes may be. Other unforgettable and universally strange characters populate this odyssey into oblivion, such as the club-footed landlady doggedly dragging a trunk along an empty railroad track into the fading twilight while politely trying to refrain from telling Joseph K. how lowly she regards him.

The movie is fairly divergent from the book, which it inspired me to read. For example, the movie comes to a conclusion, while the unfinished book does not. In most ways, though, I find the movie more memorable, haunting and downright disturbing. Its skillfully crafted mesh of images and symbols which resonate at a level deeper than the conscious will find themselves recurring to the viewer unbidden for years to come.

European Surrealism

[fideist · 10/10 · 4 March 1999]

THE TRIAL is Orson Welles's version of a typical European film with all the surrealistic trappings one might expect from a work by a Fellini. The feel is very true to Kafka's works. The sets are stunning.

Anthony Perkins is perfectly cast. Welles does his usual quality acting. But it is Romy Schneider's face that lights up the screen whenever she is on. A sad reminder that she left us way too early.

Overwhelmingly Confusing, But Magnificently Composed

[drqshadow-reviews · 6/10 · 23 August 2011]

I found a lot to adore in "The Trial," but just as much to furrow my brow over. The cinematography is stunning; full of visual metaphor and gorgeous composition, it's an unyielding show of movie-making expertise. Welles plays up the bleak, "no tomorrow" nature of the exterior scenes, the structured chaos of the workplace and the hedonistic excess exhibited by the various stages of the trial itself, each to great effect. The story, though, feels too flighty and nebulous for my taste. It should come as no surprise, being a translation of a Kafka novel, that the entire picture often feels surreal and confusing. It continuously floats and sputters just beyond the grasp of understanding, like a moth delicately avoiding a set of flailing hands. The premise may have been established nicely during the slightly more straightforward opening scenes, but as the duration grows it becomes too ambitiously ambiguous for its own good.

Watched in 2021

[koofasa · 9/10 · 12 May 2021]

We currently live in a world that often makes no sense. We are asked to believe one lie after another and see the prosecution of people for imagined slights and crimes. In other words, this film is very relevant to our world. I read the book back in the 1980's and thought it was a dystopic story about a world that I would never have to live in. I should have viewed as a cautionary tale because we are here now. Orion Welles did a good job putting his stamp on the story. At the end he used music often played when reviewing the atrocities of the Holocaust. It was the worst thing he could think of to describe what was happening to Joseph K so I can forgive that. The story shows how people's behavior changes when their choices are taken from them.

Not entirely Kafka

[Zambelli · 7/10 · 18 March 2000]

I didn't enjoy Orson Welles' version of Kafka's novel as much as I wanted to. There are several reason for this.

I don't think Welles managed to translate the specific atmosphere of Kafka's novel onto the silver screen. Kafka's story is extremely surrealistic, but its whole beauty lies in the thin line between real life and dreamlike sequences. Kafka in his novel makes sure that the transitions are very smooth and that a reader cannot truly realize where this line is drawn. Welles, on the other hand, tries to recreate this by simply jumping from one chapter to another. The atmosphere that Welles creates is not anywhere close to the one that exists in the novel. The transitions between locations, relationships between characters and Joseph K.'s own interests are poorly interpreted and the final result is not surrealistic - it's just confusing.

I was disappointed to find out that Welles decided to replace 1920s Prague (Kafka's town) with 1960s socialistic Zagreb. "Herr K." is translated into "Mister K.", which just doesn't sound right. There's also a scene in the movie in which a computer is mentioned and displayed. Yes, all this has "bureaucracy" written all over it, but it's just too far away from Kafka. It's like that theory that if Shakespeare were alive in the 20th century, he'd be writing soap-operas. Yes, perhaps the spirit is preserved, but I'd still prefer to see "The Trial" placed into its proper time.

My other objections go to film editing and the screenplay. Welles had decided to simply jump from one important scene to the other, disregarding any transitions and the important time line. By just watching the movie it's very hard to figure out that K.'s trial lasts for exactly a year and begins and ends on his birthday. Welles makes it look like the trial lasts 3-4 days. This just doesn't make sense, especially in the scene in which K. dismisses his lawyer after what only seems like one visit which apparently took place only a few days before. Also, I didn't like the immediate transitions from the paintor scene into the cathedral scene which immediately lead to K.'s final battle with the law. This is all supposed to last several months, not 15 minutes.

I appreciated Orson Welles rewriting some of the scenes from the novel and adding his own material. The opening scene of the arrest is very well done, with Welles adding some funny and satirical dialogues between K. and the "police". However, I was rather disappointed to find the priest scene seriously cut, with the lawyer appearing in the church out of nowhere and delivering some conclusions. The priest scene is one of the most important scenes in the novel; it is crucial to leave it in its original form.

The cinematography is very well done, although I wish Welles had used more shots of old downtown Zagreb for his film. I was expecting to see something in the manner of Carol Reed's "Third Man" (shot in Vienna), but Welles insisted more on socialistic new buildings of Zagreb than on the beautiful (and certainly reminiscent of Prague) old buildings of downtown Zagreb.

I also sincerely recommend the 1993 version of "The Trial" with Kyle MacLachlan and Anthony Hopkins. MacLachlan does a much better job as Joseph K. than Anthony Perkins and that movie follows the story more closely than this one. Both films are absolutely worth seeing.

The Kafka nightmare on screen

[clanciai · 10/10 · 15 March 2019]

Although totally absurd from beginning to end, making no sense at all and lacking all logic and meaning, it is a great film and one of Orson Welles' greatest. What makes this film then so enchanting and endearing in its utter horror? It's not just the music, one of the most beautiful pieces ever made, unfathomably sad like a dirge without end, but also the brilliant camera work and the fantastic settings - most of the film was apparently shot in an abandoned factory, and there are some labyrinths in it. At the same time the film is impressingly prophetic - it could have been today, it is very far from the 60s, but as it transcended that age it also transcends today. In its abstract world of unreality, this film more clearly than most hits the dimension of timelessness.

Orson Welles himself plays rhe advocate Hastler, pronounced the same way as hustler, Jeanne Moreau is the lewd neighbour of Antony Perkins, 'Josef K.', the man on trial settling with a case of hopelesslness imposed on him by an alien world he can't accept, Romy Schneider plays another lovesick mistress of the advocate and others, Elsa Martinelli is another beautiful girl, and there are crowds of extras, especially at court, where they become alive.

The not least interesting detail about the film is the fact that the music, Tommaso Albinoni's 'Adagio', has a story that fits the film. It's not at all certain that it is by Albinoni. The music turned up in Dresden after the firestorm of February 13th 1945 on a sheet of music that was saved, and someone made a proper arrangement of it. The sheet is supposed to have carried the information that it was a theme by Albinoni, but even that is uncertain. Combine the holocaust of Dresden with the mood of this film, and you'll acknowledge that Orson Welles couldn't have made a more fitting choice.

Kafka via Orson Welles

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 25 June 2006]

Young Josef K. is arrested for no reason after being accused by no one, leading to an even more bizarre chain of events. Franz Kafka's novel comes to the screen via Orson Welles, and it's a striking combination. Welles, nearly broke at this time, was approached to adapt and direct the film by a company with money but no show-biz savvy; Welles was not a fan of Kafka, but he does seem to connect with these abstract characters and elements, and he revels maliciously in Josef K.'s turmoil. Still, the plot itself is a gimmick, which grows tiresome by the final third. The picture's energy level gives out and, although it continues to look amazing, interest wanes. Edmond Richard deserves much of the praise for his startling cinematography, and Anthony Perkins is compelling, if uneven, in the lead. Welles himself appears as The Advocate (a part Jackie Gleason had to turn down because of the travel involved) and he also narrates the 'pin-screen' prologue, a parable for what follows. Flaws and all, a provocative entertainment. **1/2 from ****

Something of a trial to sit through

[MOscarbradley · 4/10 · 3 April 2014]

Orson Welles' film version of Kafka's "The Trial" is a perfectly fine 'visualization' of the book but it still doesn't work. Perhaps this was one book that should never have been filmed, not even by Welles, unless perhaps in animated form. Kafka's world, particularly the one in which Josef K finds himself, exists more in the reader's imagination rather than in any real tangible place and it's filled with characters who are never flesh-and-blood. The problem any film version has to overcome is how to translate than imaginary world and these characters into something that, at least, seems real and into something 'recognizable'. Welles doesn't do that; rather he transfers Kafka's text onto a series of Wellsian images and does it rather badly. It looks great, of course (DoP Edmond Richard) but the acting is very uneven, (it's another of Welles' 'international' projects with an international cast). Anthony Perkins makes Josef K a very fussy prima donna with whom we can have no sympathy; consequently his nightmare predicament never seems more than just a bad dream and the sooner he wakes from it the better for him and for us. Even Welles himself, playing the Advocate, can't lift the film while the dubbing of most of the cast and the post-synchronization is very poor.

"Every Man Strives To Attain The Law"

[stryker-5 · 30 December 1999]

By the times Welles moved his cast and crew to Paris to complete "The Trial", the large-scale project conceived and filmed in Yugoslavia was having to be whittled down fairly drastically because, not for the first or last time in Welles' career, the money had run out. The Paris scenes are shot entirely inside the (then) magnificently derelict Gare d'Orsay, and one wonders if the film's simple, no-frills prologue was forced on Welles by dint of poverty. Monochrome drawings are flipped upwards in a process which Welles calls "pin-screen". The director narrates the fable of a man who seeks entry through the Door of Justice, but never reaches his goal. This conundrum of guards and portals harks back to ancient times, and provides a neat distillation of the story to come.

For the entirety of the long scene in K's bedroom, and throughout the major part of the film, Welles positions the camera slightly below waist height. This 'wrong' spatial relationship creates in the viewer a vague sense of unease, a visual disorientation which compounds K's emotional loss of bearings. Welles plays clever tricks with the proportions of the rooms, their lines being slightly out of kilter, and the ceilings very much in view. Typically, Welles is deliberately and flamboyantly breaking a cardinal rule of cinematography - 'keep the ceiling out of shot'. Interiors seem open and spacious if we can't see the ceiling, and Welles is after the converse effect: driving home the point that K inhabits an airless, joyless place and his surroundings are imbued with inchoate hostility.

German expressionism had gripped Welles' imagination back in the 1930's, and virtually all of his films show its abiding influence. The columns of the opera house represent social regimentation, and K offends against social conformity by awkwardly pushing his way out of the theatre, an irregular irritant polluting the symmetry of the seating. When K gets caught in the exodus of workers from the office, he is both literally and metaphorically swimming against the tide. His microscopic ineffectuality against the ponderous stateliness of the courtroom doors drives home the expressionist point - he is a puny Jonah, entering the cavernous bowels of The State.

"To be in chains is sometimes safer than being free," and it could be said that Welles' genius flourished best when shackled by a dearth of resources. Lacking the money for costumes during the shooting of "Othello", Welles turned adversity to artistic advantage, filming the murder scene in a turkish bath, not only obviating the need for clothing but also making a succinct point about Iago's motives being 'stripped bare'. "The Trial" affords another example of Welles' remarkable fecundity. Zitorelli's studio is built of cheap slats and lit from outside, creating a powerful cinematic image of The State's placeman clinging precariously to his wretched privileges - all filmed at practically no expense. The skewed, empty picture frames are silent comments on the distorted and barren perspective of Zitorelli, the human race's Benedict Arnold.

K is a Freudian picaro, journeying in despair through the intestines of a nightmare system of justice, an apparatus ironically designed to ensure that justice is stifled. The shades of Buchenwald are introduced by Welles. Defendants wait with meathooks above their heads and, in other parts of this unfathomable 'system', nameless naked unfortunates stand in quiet misery, their numbers hanging from their necks. Leni and The Wife are grotesque distortions of Dante's Beatrice, malformed guides with no sense of direction and no transcendent vision. Welles himself plays Hassler the advocate, the bully who has no thought of his client's welfare but seeks only to perpetuate the cruel gavotte of litigation. "The confusion's impenetrable," a point reinforced by shooting characters through interminable patterns of beams and girders, whose shifting geometry engulfs the insignificant humans.

In his 1985 biography of Welles, Charles Higham declared "The Trial" a failure, concluding that it was "muffled, dull, unexciting on every level". Perhaps more tellingly, he criticised Welles for adopting a grandiose approach, whereas Kafka's work cries out for spareness and understatement. Higham is excellent, but the film is not, in my humble opinion, a failure. It evokes with emotional power a dreamspace of despair, and in so doing renders a great service to Kafka's oeuvre.

THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER MADE

[nutsy · 10/10 · 21 October 2003]

Anthony Perkins realizes the paranoia of Joseph K, charged with an unnamed crime by uncooperative detectives and pursued by victims, executioners, and young girls through a nightmarish European city which is darker than the blackest things in horror of film noir. The terrifying,thought provoking, dreamily real picture could only have been brought to us by Orson Welles. He comes to us not only as a director, but again as an actor. Welles plays a bedridden lawyer in a cavernous house and enters in the cloud of smoke from a cigar. Romy Shneider shines as his nursemaid who seduces the lawyers clients like K and Block(Akim Tamiroff). Welles updated Kafka's THE TRIAL to the age after the holocaust and the atomic bomb. This is aided by the locations Welles was forced to shoot in after funding was cut. Edmund Richard masterfully moves his camera through the ruined interiors of a decaying industrial Europe. K's dillema is hightened by the cavernous abandoned railroad station. The picture is genius from the pinscreen opening to the spellbinding climax. Fans of THE THIRD MAN should appreciate the final scenes. Welles's best and therefore the best there is.

Expressionistic, with existential, near dead-pan surrealism- an extraordinary story-telling/directorial experience

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 30 June 2004]

The word "Kafka-esque" is now a house-hold name. When people hear it, they think of a situation or a person who has, basically, a cruel prank thrust upon them (aside from the Trial, his story of a worker up against a labyrinth legal system, The Metamorphosis had his protagonist turned into a cockroach as if it was his fault). As well, in particularly with the Trial, there is a sense of (obviously) paranoia, words spoken unintentionally but taken seriously, and many situations, locations, and minor characters that are of a dream-like state. Orson Welles, with Kafka's story, does everything for effect, creating and maintaining an atmosphere that he honed after years of film-noirs. The mis-en-scene is always with a purpose to get the viewer into the tension and on-going confusion (which is with the lead, Mr. Joseph K played by Anthony Perkins), and the end result of Welles' directorial stamp on the work is that of something like a psychological horror film.

With the long takes, the usage of darkness and lights, the indoor and outdoor locations, and deep focus, the look of the film, it could be argued, tops the story in some parts. K is just a worker, an assistant of sorts in some kind of futuristic (or past or present, the time and place is left vague and it doesn't hurt the film) city. As he is under arrest, he tries to fight his case, as he's never been told why he was arrested. The people he meets, the law, aren't much help, as they act logically, but only logically in the dream-like state. As Perkins' K needs legal assistance, his uncle Max introduces him to the Advocate (Welles himself), who is a subtle, frightening presence with a control over his clients. As K wonders what he'll do, the story starts to spiral into running from children, going from one place seamlessly into another, until he is blended into this world of the abstract.

The acting is what would separate The Trial from being a weird, experimental (though to a degree the technical side of the film is a little experimental) landscape. Perkins creates a performance that gets us to believe in him, to find him as being a sympathetic (and, for at least a few of us in movie-viewing land, empathetic) persona. All of his little flubs and little moments of nervousness add to the believability. And in truth we've all been in this sort of situation K's been in, or at least known someone like this, not knowing what it is as the charge, but feeling a subliminal guilt without reason. Perkins captures all of the emotions, and finds that line where he doesn't go into nervous, black comedy, and his plight becomes more tragic as we get sucked into this nightmare society. There are also memorable side-bar performances by Jeanne Moreau, Madeline Robinson, Max Haufler, Akim Tamiroff (who also made an impression in his bit in Alphaville), and William Chappell. Welles, by the way, dubs in many of the voices, and in a sense this is like his greatest visual translation of something he might have done (though it's moot as of now) on the radio. In fact, the use of sound is practically as impressive as the visual style.

And what style there is in The Trial. This is the kind of film to be watched in its digital transfer on widescreen DVD, or projected in a theater. There is a consistently darkened tone to most scenes (especially in the last hour or so, for example in K's running in the sewer), and then light rushes in as something of a Welles' trademark. It could be said that Welles', not Perkins, is the true star of the film, by being the (almost) overwhelming presence he is in every frame. Due credit is as well to Edmund Richard (amazingly his first film, and he would go on to work on Bunuel's 70's surreal efforts), but it is arguable that Welles' was at a peak as a director. The best thing that can be said about The Trial is that for today's audiences, those who won't understand the path the story takes in the first viewing, will surely be intrigued enough by the editing style, the faces, the photography, and the ideas that do come through. Two sequences alone- the first part of K in the trial room with the audience present, and a visit to a painter surrounded by little girls- can be counted as some of Welles' finest work.

There's an underlying existential theme (K's on and off time with his sense of free will, his sense of isolation, and the Advocate's last dialog with K proves this) that works alongside with the surreal nature of the picture. By the end of the film, which ends on a note that will baffle some, anger others (perhaps by it not following the book), and bring on a catharsis that can barely be explained, it's at least clear the effect Welles' and his lead have put on is a pure, unique cross-breed of Kafka's tale of maddening persecution. And it does, as with Welles' more famous works like Touch of Evil and Citizen Kane, demands to be seen two, three, ten more times. A+

"To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free."

[elvircorhodzic · 8/10 · 10 June 2017]

THE TRIAL is a mystery drama which, in a creative but rather confused way, shows a tyranny and ruthlessness of a peculiar social system. It is based on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka.

Mr. K. sleeps peacefully in his bedroom, in an apartment, which he shares with other lodgers. Early in the morning, a policeman opens his bedroom door. Several detectives enter and tell him he is under open arrest. Mr. K. is pretty confused. He thinks it's a prank of his colleagues from his place of employment. The detectives collect evidence. The police refuse to inform Mr. K. of his misdeeds, or if he is even being charged with a crime, and they do not take him into custody. Later, Mr. K. converses to their neighbors about the strange event. An incomprehensible loop of charges tightens very quickly around a hapless young man...

This is a trance of a ruthless and brutal law that systematically destroys one man. The social system is complex and very calculated in its intent. Mr. Welles tried to show us, through the symbolic elements, experiences of a confused and rebellious young man as a disease of a society. The confusion of an individual who is exposed to a torture of a particular system is a very common phenomenon in all societies.

The story, in which the main protagonist wanders in search of meaning and output is unconventional. It is difficult to follow the main plot of a disoriented system of images and angles. A sick social harmony, in relation to the behavior of the protagonists further confuses our mind.

Characterization is very good. Anthony Perkins as Josef K. is a confused and frightened hero of this story. He is a victim of social secrets. His fate is predetermined, his resistance is futile. Orson Welles as Albert Hastler, The Advocate is the main antagonist. His character is the personification of a disease of a society. He is a necessary systemic evil. Akim Tamiroff as Bloch is a symbolic representation of a systemic manipulation.

Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli are trapped symbols between morality, laws and systems.

I am confused even more than Mr. Perkins. Well, I have read Kafka's novel.

not Welles at his best

[tsf-1962 · 8/10 · 26 November 2006]

Orson Welles is one of my heroes, but I don't think "The Trial" was one of his better films. It's interesting stylistically (especially in its use of settings--an abandoned railroad station in Paris and a suitably Orwellian apartment building in what was then Yugoslavia) but I don't think Orson's heart was in it; he just didn't get Kafka. This was one of the few directing efforts that Welles was actually paid for (by the same producers who went on to make "The Three Musketeers" and "Superman") and he only agreed to do it if he could get Anthony Perkins (fresh from his success in "Psycho") as Josef K. Fortunately for Orson Tony was a fan of his and jumped at the chance. The rest is history. Welles was bothered by Josef K's passivity in the original novel and sought to make him more defiant, but the result in Anthony Perkins' hands came off as petulant. The movie followed Kafka's novel until the end, when instead of being spread-eagled and knifed by his executioners he is given the knife but refuses to stab himself, whereupon the executioners throw a stick of dynamite in the ditch with him, which he attempts to throw back but it explodes. The original ending was better and by dispensing with it Welles lost sight of the story's religious symbolism; in the novel Josef K's death has unmistakable parallels with the Crucifixion but also with the sacrifice of Isaac in the Old Testament. Josef K, the scapegoat, dies to atone for whose sins--his or ours? On the plus side Welles gives a majestic performance as Hasterer, the defense attorney, and Romy Schneider is sexy as Leni, the attorney's horny nurse who sleeps with all his clients. This is a film that all Kafka students and Welles enthusiasts should see at least once.

Wonderfully Executed, but Suffers from its Unfinished Source Material

[souplipton · 7/10 · 4 May 2016]

The Trial is Orson Welles' attempt to adapt Franz Kafka's tale to the silver screen, and the success of that adaptation is an interesting case. The film's visual style and atmosphere are impeccable, but its plot seems to be tenuously put together. This is not surprising, as the source material was never completed by Kafka, and was never intended to be published. The book was assembled after his death by his executor out of the unordered (and sometimes unfinished) chapters which Kakfa had written. The adaptation deals with this by playing the tale as very surreal, which is brought out most excellently by the sets. Welles used an abandoned train station to construct his giant spacious sets, which evoke strange responses with their industrial decay, open work places of endless repetition, and claustrophobia. All the settings are strange and off-putting in the best of ways. The cinematography too is incredible, with exaggerated and unrealistic lighting picked up by the canted and unusual angles to create an unsettling effect. The cast also works wonderfully, as Perkins gives one of his best performances as the protagonist Joseph K. The filmic aspects of the work are all wonderfully executed, but the film doesn't quite pull it off. This is due to the problems with adapting a work which was itself unfinished. However, this shortcoming can be overlooked, as this is one of Welles' best works, a daring work of cinema to be enjoyed and appreciated.

An absolute masterpiece of B&W cinematography!

[aayoung · 10/10 · 4 May 2002]

If Kafka wrote a nightmare scenario, Orson Welles followed his cues to perfection in creating a series of nightmare scenes, growing incessantly from the extremely banal to the increasingly disturbing. But drama aside, the movie is a visual masterpiece. The sets are stunning --even the seeming ordinary such as warehouses and hallways are transformed by the way they are shot. Lighting is used to maximum impact, while every shot, every camera angle is a memorable work of art. Never has black-and-white film been used to better effect. Every lover of classic cinematic art should have this film.

The Trial

[henry8-3 · 7/10 · 11 January 2022]

Joseph K (Anthony Perkins) living in some form of dull regimented dystopian future awakes to find himself sucked into a vast and self serving legal system when he is arrested for a crime that is never explained to him. He looks to understand the system and the people within it who might be able to help him.

Certainly this is not for everyone and the interpretations of Kafka's book are many and varied. Best then to let it wash all over you and marvel at one of Welles' best films. The sets using the abandoned Gare D'Orsay are extraordinarily beautiful in their way - all broken and dirty with mile upon mile of legal records and people awaiting decisions. These nicely support the clever set pieces - eg a seduction upon a hill of paper, a small wooden cubicle where the court artist escapes from the court children?? - bizarre yet always compelling. Perkins is superbly cast, all jittery, angry and paranoid with fine support from Schneider, Tamiroff and Wells himself. Weird and deeply wonderful.

An accused in a bizarre society.

[nicovdk-54575 · 9/10 · 28 January 2021]

This film is an interesting and sometimes bewildering experience given to the viewer by Orson Welles drawing on the work of Franz Kafka.

The Trial shows the viewer a man waking up and finding himself accused of a crime, he is not told what this crime is he has committed, but he now finds that the world has become increasingly more bizarre. With each step he takes to acquit himself of these charges he becomes more entrapped in the justice system of this dystopian like society.

This black and white film from the early 60's sometimes shows wide open spaces with only one or two characters navigating the bleakness or cold harshness of the city. On other occasions the viewer is trapped with the protagonist in claustrophobic and inescapable scenes trying to make sense of the world. The Trial has excellent and beautiful cinematography that sharpens the haunting spaces of structures and the hopelessness felt in this society.

The Trial has a great leading performance by Anthony Perkins (from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho). Welles's gives a lot of space for the women in this film with some solid performances by the leading ladies. Welles' himself shows us again he really knows how to play a menacing character.

The Trial is an exceptional film made in Europe based on Kafka's novel "Der Prozess". The film has certainly the traits of a great filmmaker and is a great watch for anyone who wants to see more of Orson Welles' great work. Would also recommend this to anyone who is interested in films showcasing the more weird and bizarre nature of society.

The Trial

[CinemaSerf · 7/10 · 6 November 2022]

There is something really quite terrifying about the scenario in which "Josef K" (a career-best performance from Anthony Perkins, I think) finds himself in this rather sinister thriller. He is awakened one morning to find the police in his bedroom. He is arrested and told he is to stand trial. For what, you might think? Well, that's what he wonders too - and every effort he makes to establish just what he is supposed to have done fails to deliver. His detention is hardly traditional either. He is largely free to come and go as he pleases, provided always that he is available to attend his questioning sessions by those who seem rather arbitrarily charged with deciding his guilt or innocence. As his (and our) frustrations grow, he explores the lives of those close to him - might the source of his predicament lie there? Luckily, his uncle learns of his situation and engages the learned advocate "Hastler" (Orson Welles) - but is he likely to prove an help or an hindrance? This story is Kafka as his very best. Machiavellian scheming mixed with the ultimate in "Big Brother" state manipulation; the disabling lack of information and the increasing exasperation of young "Josef" are successfully transferred onto an audience that shares his fears and apprehensions. Gradually, we learn a great deal about this man, his flaws, foibles and fetishes, but still are uncertain as to just what he is supposed to have done! A considerable degree of the menace here emanates from the dark photography and from an effective supporting cast who excel in perpetuating the mystery, too. Welles directs this with considerable aplomb, Jean Ledrut provides an evocative and mysterious score to accompany a screenplay that delivers the sense of vexation and chagrin well and compellingly. Fans of horror films ought to watch this too - it's one of the scariest films I have ever seen.

Guilty as charged and of what?

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 8 June 2016]

I think filming Franz Kafka is probably more difficult than filming Ernest Hemingway. Getting all the meaning out of Hemingway's sparse prose has certainly been a challenge. But with Kafka and The Trial, how do you film inside a man's mind in an unnamed existential world?

Well Orson Welles certainly gave it a try. The first time I watched The Trial I started a few times and gave up. I was determined to see it through and did this time. I did see it through and came away still not sure of what I saw.

Anthony Perkins is the protagonist Jozef K. He's a nameless toiler in what Kafka correctly sees as a future age of information. Had the film been done today you would see Perkins as a nameless drone chained to a computer. But he's done something that has whatever authority there is most upset. He's under arrest though for a moment free on some futuristic version of bail on an unnamed charge.

Civil liberties have certainly gone out the window. Kafka was not writing about an Anglo-Saxon society where one's innocent until proved guilty. Guilty as charged with little or no chance of proving yourself innocent.

I'm not sure Welles had any fixed notions about filming this in the way he firmly knew his mind with his other and better films. He was experimenting here with some stream of consciousness type technique and I think he was attempting the impossible. He wrote some interesting vignettes for people Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Akim Tamiroff who offer varying degrees of sympathy for Perkins's plight, but all can really do nothing.

The Trial is an interesting experiment, but it doesn't make it in my book.