Where to start? Leave it to me, when choosing a film from the great director, to choose one that probably least best represents him. Well, I sure wasn’t going to write any more additional, undeserved praise about that over-rated movie about a sled, so this is what you get!. Just kidding. Seriously though, The Trial is an adaptation of a Franz Kafka story so the challenging and somewhat inaccessible nature of his work will always take the driver’s seat in a project like this. Similarly, another favorite director of mine, Michael Haneke, made his attempt at adapting the Kafka book The Castle. Though both directors have distinct and recognizable styles, both of these films would be lost among their distinguished…

Absurd. Surreal. Oppressive. All fine words to describe Orson Welles' The Trial, but I think the term that best describes how I felt while watching is 'hysterical': not in the sense that The Trial is a comedy - to describe it as a black comedy stretches the very definition to the breaking point - but that I found myself laughing to ward off the physical and mental unease it forced upon me (especially during the absolutely insane last 20 minutes). That a film can cause laughter as a defense mechanism is a testament to Welles, Kafka, and Perkins.

The dialogue flies by so fast that you become inured to the fact that the words spoken are so bizarre, the sentences…

Orson Welles brings to the screen a terrific adaptation of The Trial, a nightmarish posthumously published Franz Kafka novel. The film features an eccentric cast that includes Anthony Perkins as the unfortunate Joseph K, a passive office worker arrested and standing trial on the strength of being accused of a never-explained crime. The story follows him as he tries to wend his way through the legal system, but finds himself distracted, diverted and continually kept in the dark about his case. 

It's only the second film, along with Citizen Kane, that Welles could master from its conception to the final editing. Throughout, he demonstrates excellent fidelity to the original material's essence by distilling sexuality and irony in his film, two…

5x5 Directors - Film #15
15 from the 60s - Film #3
Welles Ranked
FTWs 2019

I didn't read the unfinished Kafka novel Der Prozess but I read some of Kafka's other (short) stories, the best known would be Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) so I knew (and liked) the kind of atmosphere he transports via his writing style. Luckily, I didn't know anything about The Trial other than it being a film directed by Orson Welles and starring Anthony Perkins. It was recommended to me several times here on Letterboxd (shout-out to Michael's Cinema Paradiso especially) and oh my, this a great film.

Welles perfectly captures Kafka's depressively confusing atmosphere by a fantastic cinematography, a phenomenal script and (probably his…

Perhaps one of the least known of Orson Welles' near immaculate filmography is The Trial, a Franz Kafka adaptation that only could have come from an imagination as bizarre and inventive as Welles'. Starring a post-Psycho yet still fractured Anthony Perkins, it's a tricky maze of bureaucracy that satirizes a melancholy examination of the absolutely laborious process (hence the original title Le Procès). This is entirely a Welles picture, however- his trademark angled camera shots are omnipresent, furthering the delusional funhouse mirror style proceedings that ensue for the strangely named Josef K.

The Trial's style is something out of a fever dream- or more aptly perhaps, nightmare- that whisks our befuddled protagonist through his legal proceedings for a crime that…

The Trial is a gripping film of how bureaucratic systems can crush the individual. It is the story of one man within the societal machine. His trial takes place outside work hours, to ensure he can slave away at work and be crushed by the system in his free time also. This is a surreal and cryptic film, with conversations that all go nowhere and fruitless attempts by our protagonist to escape his fate. The odd cinematography and large sets create something perfectly confusing. However, even beyond Kafka's nonsensical narrative, this film is a indecipherable mess. As our lead is illogically led down a path towards death, the film makes little effort to present this confusion clearly. What is deliberately…

To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free.
-Hastler

I knew nothing about this film going in. I basically thought it was a straight forward film about a man wrongfully accused of a crime, so I was thinking maybe I'd be lucky and it would turn out Hitchcockian. Turned out much more Kafkaesque for what are obvious reasons now.

You have Orson Welles adapting Franz Kafka's 1925 novel and it turns out exactly as brilliant as you would expect. First you have Anthony Perkins in the lead, and he's fantastic, but having him portray Josef K., a man arrested but never told why he faces a trial adds so many layers to the story that I imagine…

If any movie deserved a better transfer this is it. Its a testament to how well its filmed and the set design that despite the terrible transfer the scale and cinematography still shine.

Its a bit of a chameleon of a film. At first it appears decades older than it is. But the dialogue and camera movements quickly reveal lots of creativity and modernity not seen back then. The setting and story also could easily be interpreted as taking place in a dystopian future.

We follow K, a corporate middle manager who has been told he is accused of a crime and must stand trial. We then follow him through the deliberately confusing, frustrating and obfuscated path he takes to…