Popular reviews

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  Review by PTAbro ★★★★½ 3

  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…

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  Review by justmiaslife ★★★½ 1

  Damn Anthony Perkins, why are you always playing such fucked up roles...?! The only thing that I want is to finally be allowed to find Norman Bates hot

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½

  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…

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  Review by Andrew Saladino ★★★★★

  A real wonder -- one of those experiences I have only a couple of times a year of being instantly grabbed from the first frame and held completely for the whole duration of a movie. Welles filters Kafka's absurdism through a slight German Expressionist lens, getting incredible mileage out of the Eastern Bloc brutalist architecture standing in for a wasteland of mindless mass order and structure - that army of worker bee drones clacking away at their desks and then rising together in unison at the end of the workday is like something out of a Jacques Tati movie; in fact, the dark comedy here would make it a great double-feaure with PLAYTIME, or even Gilliam's BRAZIL or Billy Wilder's…

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  Review by Wesley R. Ball ★★★★½ 4

  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…

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  Review by plaidflannel ★★★★★ 2

  There’s a trial to it all, an unspoken but excessively acted agreement to how and why to prod the mind and beg for answers where they can’t be found. What’s the crime? What isn’t the crime? Everything is labyrinthine to hide the senselessness, but it instead reveals it. But the absurdity is a vehicle transferring our awareness to the truth, the truth that is revealed in the absurdity but incongruent with it as well. The image being reflected isn’t quite as broken as the mirror itself. Just take a real look, and forgive. 

  Wow this film is just perfect. Words can’t do it justice. Not right now anyway.

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  Review by jackflowers

  Orson Welles really was the greatest filmmaker, huh?

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★½ 1

  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…

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  Review by DIREKTIONZ ★★★½ 2

  If you want to believe Orson Welles then The Trial is the best film of his career. I would agree for the first hour of this film that it’s undoubtedly a masterpiece. The camera-movements are revolutionary and the production-design couldn’t be more stunning. The performances are pitch-perfect, even till the end, and the story couldn’t be more fascinating.

  But it sadly loses its impact in the last 3rd act of the film. Several editing mistakes can visibly be seen and the pacing trudges along towards the end. It just looses too much focus on the plot. In other words, it doesn’t stick the landing, although it still impresses me every single second.

  The Trial is at least fascinating film-making and especially in the first hour it’s quite possible one of the best filmmaking you can see in the 60s and, honestly, ever. Orson Welles is a legend

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  Review by Mr. DuLac ★★★★½ 1

  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…

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  Review by Ethan ☔️ 1

  This isn’t even fiction the American legal system just be like that.

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  Review by Cinekraut ★★★★½ 5

  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…