Crime Street presents The Trial (1962)

Director - Orson Welles
 

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Plot
Commentary
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

A man known only by the name "K" awakens in his room. Two policemen enter. K is accused of committing a crime. He is not told of what he is being charged. As he talks with the police, three of his office associates search an adjoining room. The police leave K and he confides in his fellow boarder, Miss Burstner (Jeanne Moreau). She becomes angry that his confidence will cause her problems. And she is right, as she is turned out from her lodgings.

K goes to his office, an enormous indefinable piece of the reigning reality of bureaucracy. In the evening, K attends an opera but during the performance he is summoned to a court hearing. K goes to the hearing, defies the proceedings, and goes off to find a lawyer. And on and on as K's criminalization dark journey dissolves and matieralizes into one mysterious labyrinth after another, until it reaches a literally explosive conclusion.

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Film Notes

Neglected Masterpiece

Orson Welles's adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial was trashed and savagely discarded upon its initial release in 1962. Produced after Touch of Evil (also a critical and box office failure in its initial release) the film has, like a cockroach in a post-nuclear world, outlasted its contemporaries. Today, you're more likely to hear it called a masterpiece than a disaster.

It begins and ends with the same parable (Before the Law). The voice of Welles himself says that the story has the "logic of a dream or a nightmare." The film takes that dream logic as its starting point.

Technique

As in all Welles', work the film takes advantage of many techniques the plastic art of cinema has to offer. The visuals and the sound blow in and out of every moment. There is no plot-point to plot-point. The film begins with the claustrophobic feel of people in small rooms with low ceilings. The film progresses into larger and larger expanses as the actors are dwarfed by their surroundings. Classical music is juxtaposed against jazz. Welles himself dubbed his own voice for several of the characters.

Three Countries

This is no post-World War II triumphant Europe. The Trial was filmed in three locations in three countries - France, Italy, and Croatia. The three are seamlessly meshed as Anthony Perkins in a single scene might walk out the door in Dubravna, cross the street into Rome, and wind up or down a staircase in Gare d'Orsay. Knowing this fact adds to the already surreal experience of viewing the film.

Is That You Norman?

Even before Anthony Perkins played the PSYCHOpath Norman Bates in Hitchcock's landmark film, he exhibited a disturbing interior beneath his boyish exterior. Whether in Desire Under the Elms , Fear Strikes Out, or even Tall Story, there was always some unlikable creepiness hidden and crawling beneath his surface.

His later career consisted mostly of parodies of his Norman Bates persona. But it is worth seeking out Play It As It Lays (1972) for a brilliantly dark exposé of a divided self.

This Reflection of the World is Closer than it Appears

Look at your own risk for the following:

• Romy Schneider's webbed fingers
• The endless room of endless typists
• Akim Tamirioff as love interest
• Policemen being flogged
• The wild children

Pursuing Trivia is Not Trivial

William Chappell, who portrays Titorelli, an avant-garde painter in the film, was a renowned dancer, designer and director. One of the first members of the Ballet Rambert, he and also danced with the Vic-Wells Ballet, creating roles in Job and Checkmate among others as well as designing Cephalus and Procris (1931) for de Valois. He was the author of a biography of Margot Fonteyn.

Akim Tamiroff was trained by Stanislavsky (the god of all acting teachers) at the Moscow Art Theater School. He also appeared in Orson Welles' Mr Arkadin and Touch of Evil.

And just remember...

"To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free." And close the door behind you.

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

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Cast

Production Credits

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For more on...

Orson Welles
Franz Kafka
Before the Law

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