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…

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…

Film School Drop Outs
Week 12: Mar. 19-Mar. 25
Auteurs - Orson Welles

Ages ago I read a David Foster Wallace essay, from the days as a literature professor that ultimately lead to his death about Kafka, about how he would teach 'The Trial' and his class would all respond in the same way; talk about totalitarianism and powerlessness and arbitrary justice. And how Wallace turned it all on it's head by asking. 'But What If he's guilty' how it wasn't a nightmare just a cosmic joke.

Welles definitely thinks it's a nightmare, I guess in the cold war thats understandable, there were other countries where you were told that was how it worked. where you could live your life…

“‘Everyone strives to reach the Law,’ says the man, ‘so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admittance?’ The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: ‘No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.’”

Part of my Adapted Novels Project: adaptation of The Trial, written by Franz Kafka (1925). Started reading the book on the twenty-eighth of October, finished it the sixth of November and watched the movie on the seventh.

Without having done anything illegal as far as…

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…

Is this the first Orson Welles film that gets a 5/5 from me? (thinks about it) oh maybe not, but it is the most perfect thing I've seen from the auteur so far.

I suffer from serious anxiety, and this often makes it difficult for me to interact with others without feeling nervous. But wait, that's not all! With every load of anxiety, you get a big ol' box of guilt! That's right guilt! Guilt from things you did when you were 3 years old, guilt from things you’re not sure if you did, guilt from things any normal person would just not think about. Yessir, nothing like bonofied, electrified, six-car guilt! And what I love most about "The Trial"…

Franz Kafka hat mit seinen Büchern sicher einiges erreich und uns surreale Welten gezeigt, die aber auch immer eine Botschaft hatten. Sei es „die Verwandlung“ von Gregor Samsa oder wie nun hier der Fall von Josef K. in „der Prozess“. Kein geringer als Orsen Wells nahm sich 1962 den Stoff von Kafka an und lieferte ein Meisterwerk ab.

Was Wells hier geschaffen hat ist nicht nur sehr nah an dem Buch von der Handlung her sondern auch von dem was wir sehen. Die Bauten und die wirklich exzellente Kameraführung. So erleben wir als Zuschauer schon nach dem Prolog eine längere Szene die am Stück gedreht wurden ist, bevor es das erste Mal einen Schnitt gibt mit einer anderen Kameraeinstellung und…

I've been doing this quest to complete the Orson Welles directorial filmography for a many months now, and I have to say that I've been slightly disappointed by the latest entries I saw: 'The Immortal Story' wasn't good and 'Lady From Shanghai' wasn't as great as I had hoped. How nice is it now to say that I was blown away by 'The Trial', its probably my second favourite of his films.

The direction is genius. These days films usually cut every few seconds but Welles likes to use long, sweeping takes that are never distracting, but for me improved the film even more. I've heard that Welles continued to make black and white films as long as he can…