The Trial (1962)

July 27, 2022 7:11 AM

An unassuming office worker is arrested and stands trial, but he is never made aware of his charges. Orson Welles takes liberties in his adaptation, but constructs an absurd nightmare that is unmistakably Kafkaesque -- grounded by an excellent Anthony Perkins as the befuddled Josef K.

Written and directed by Orson Welles. Also stars Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Akim Tamiroff, and Welles himself.

Rated 84% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Currently streaming in the US on Kanopy, Peacock, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.

posted by DirtyOldTown (3 comments total)

Fun facts: the images in the opening narration are not illustrations: they are nail art, nails hammered into a board to make an image. Also, this film had the same issues with sync sound that were common to most Welles productions of the time. (Good sound recording was prohibitively expensive in those days.) And so, a fair amount of ADR (additional dialogue recording) after the fact was needed. The thing was, Perkins was busy on another project and had limited availability. So Welles dubbed a number of Perkins' lines. His imitation was so good that Tony himself could not identify which lines were not his own voice.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:17 AM on July 27, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think it's in the Arena doc about Welles, where Peter Bogdanovich talks about watching a screening of The Trial at a film festival with Welles and Cybill Shepherd - they sat at the back and laughed all the way through it and people kept turning round and giving them dirty looks for laughing at this work of Art. Welles was firmly of the opinion that K was - in his words - guilty as hell.
posted by Grangousier at 9:17 AM on July 27, 2022

If you're interested in this Orson Welles movie have a look at this 1991 Soderbergh movie as well.
posted by jouke at 11:56 AM on July 28, 2022