THE TRIAL Movie Review

Le Proces
Der Prozess
Il Processo

It would appear that Orson Welles felt an affinity with Franz Kafka's story of a man facing the onslaught of an impossible bureaucratic nightmare and who is presumed guilty no matter what. Anthony Perkins plays Joseph K., the man who finds himself being interrogated without any hint of his alleged crime, and who turns to a mysterious and self-important defense attorney (Welles) for help. As Joseph's situation deteriorates and he sees little chance of exoneration, he begins to believe that it must all be true, that he indeed must be guilty—of something. Few Americans saw The Trial on its original release, and few have seen it since. Kafka purists don't like it, and even Welles enthusiasts find the picture hard to warm up to. The paradox, of course, is that a successful screen adaptation of The Trial, which this is, can't be warmed up to; it's designed to be a disorienting, disturbing, joyless glimpse at a world in which the game is over before it's begun. Or, to quote Mark Twain: “When you're born, you're finished.” Twenty years after The Magnificent Ambersons was taken out of Welles's hands and amputated, with much of the critical and popular world agreeing that he was a genius who “never lived up to his potential,” despite the fact that he had continued—against all odds—to do brilliant work, how could this great artist not feel like Joseph K., accused, as he always was, of the unforgivable crime of being “Orson Welles?” And the movie reflects those decades of injury (granted, some self-inflicted) with its claustrophobic, uncompromisingly bleak and despairing tone. But underneath this story of a human spirit crushed is Welles the magician, the man who fell so in love with the cinema that he gave everything up for it (and was ridiculed, like The Blue Angel’s Professor Emanuel Rath, for his passion). The Trial’s imagery is so powerful and its editing so nightmarishly logical that it feels like the product of some new form of stream-of-consciousness directing—but with the discipline and technical skills of a master. Even the disembodied, post-synchronized voices that haunt most of Welles's films (and most European co-productions like this one) work in the movie's favor by suggesting the impersonal, the disembodied, the lifeless functionaries who only follow orders. This is Kafka, all right. It's also every inch a film by Orson Welles. The only Orson Welles. The one who lived up to his potential. (Franz K. himself might have enjoyed knowing that The Trial’s producer, Alexander Salkind, metamorphosed into the force behind three Superman movies.) With Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Jeanne Moreau, and Akim Tamiroff. And if a number of the characters in this movie sound suspiciously like Orson Welles, you're not paranoid, just astute.

NEXT STOP … Touch of Evil, Mr. Arkadin, Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life

1963 118m/B FR Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Romy Schneider, Akim Tamiroff, Elsa Martinelli; D: Orson Welles; C: Edmond Richard; M: Jean Ledrut. VHS CVC, HHT, WFV