THE TRIAL
A film by Orson Welles
Based on Kafka's novel The Trial
1962/ France | West Germany | Italy / 119 minutes
12^th Nov 2017/ 5.45 pm / Perks Mini Theater

A unique cinematic experience.

Orson Welles ("Citizen Kane"/"Touch of Evil") in a defensive manner has said that "The Trial' is the finest film I have ever made." This is a loose adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel, published posthumously in 1925. The Trial takes place in an unnamed hostile country. Anthony Perkins is an excellent choice to play the Jewish bureaucrat clerk Joseph K, a man arrested in his bare apartment early in the morning by two heavy-handed fascist-type of policeman and not told what crime he is charged with as he's brought to trial.

Filled with a sense of guilt, a constant twitch, a nervous manner of speaking and hiding his fear through repression of being exposed as some kind of sexual deviant, the bland but ambitious office clerk Joseph K  takes no comfort as he's defended by the tyrannical Advocate (Orson Welles), who offers him no reason to believe his case will be resolved in a positive way. Never told what he's charged with, the innocent man begins to doubt even his innocence, as he's mentally tortured by trying to recall what he might have done to deserve this fate.

Smartly filmed in vast dark empty spaces, cluttered interiors, war-torn exteriors, chilling lobbies and arcades, which are turned into Freudian dreamscapes of the unconscious.  The sinister inhuman/baroque/surreal look is the look everywhere in the film, including in Joseph K's office workplace (which can be compared to the horrors of a cold American workplace).

  

As the trial pushes on, K becomes involved with three sexually intriguing women -- Jeanne Moreau (his next door neighbor prostitute), Romy Schneider (mistress of the Advocate), and Elsa Martinelli (a cleaning lady in the law courts) -- who all serve as bitter reminders of how he has been persecuted all his life. 

The film is brilliantly lit on the dark side, much like a film noir, pouring over with critical thoughts about the individual, society, and art. Though not for all all tastes, those who stay with this one will be richly rewarded with a unique cinematic experience. Welles is a great filmmaker, who is an excellent guide into a Kafkaesque nightmare.    (Thanks to  Dennis Schwartz)

  

Orson Welles

Hollywood Rebel & Founding Member of The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers

Though little appreciated in his time, Orson Welles is today one of classic Hollywood's most acclaimed cinematic visionaries Always an outsider to the studio system which dominated filmmaking at the time however, Welles never condescended to play by Hollywood's rules and his arduous four-decade career was pocked with moments of brilliance, excess and waste.

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an Academy Award-winning American director, writer, actor and producer for film, stage, radio and television. Welles first gained wide notoriety for his October 30, 1938, radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Adapted to sound like a contemporary news broadcast, it caused a number of listeners to panic. In 1941, he co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, often chosen in polls of film critics as the greatest film ever made. And in 1941, at 26, he achieved his greatest ambition through formation of his own Mercury Productions, Inc. The rest of his career was often obstructed by lack of funds, incompetent studio interference and other unfortunate occurrences, both during exile in Europe and brief returns to Hollywood. Despite these difficulties Othello won the 1952 Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the Cannes Film Festival and Touch of Evil won the top prize at the Brussels World Fair, while Welles himself considered The Trial and Chimes at Midnight to be the best of his efforts.

Although Welles remained on the margins of the major studios as a director/producer, his large

r-than-life personality made him a bankable actor. In his later years he struggled against a Hollywood system that refused to finance his independent film projects, making a living largely through acting, commercials, and voice-over work. Welles received a 1975 American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement award, the third person to do so after John Ford and James Cagney. Critical appreciation for Welles has increased since his death. He is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important dramatic artists of the 20th century: in 2002 he was voted as the greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute's poll of Top Ten Directors.