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The Twisted Beauty of The Trial

Film // Jim // 20th February 2006

There is a nice symmetry between Orson Welle's 1962 film of The Trial and Franz Kafka's source novel. Neither enjoyed a particularly typical development and their respective creators were ultimately fated to remain unfulfilled (to a greater or lesser extent) during their lifetime.

Franz Kafka lived a short life (he died at just forty), a doctor of law and something of an intellectual. Despite a terrible line in chat-up patter, he had quite a number of affairs with interesting young women but could not be said to have enjoyed the best of health. While he was alive only a small number of his stories were published, following his death he left instructions for the rest of his written output to be destroyed due to what appears to be a shattering lack of confidence. However his executor, a man named Max Brod, took the step of not only preserving the works but also editing and publishing them in a series of volumes.

Out of this posthumous body of work came The Trial, the story of Josef K. A man placed under arrest without explaination who finds himself the subject of an arcane and impossibly bureacratic legal procedure which he is unable to escape or even fully comprehend.

Read as a warning about (or even a satire on) the totalitarian state, the Trial is a companion to (and most likely an influence on) the likes of 1984 and Catch-22. The story is ultimately pessimistic, yet increasing relevant and has a dream-like logic and progression to it - this may be due to the fact that the novel was structured on a best guess basis by Brod, organising the chapters as he felt Kafka had intended.This pervading sense of unknown, bureaucratic forces being able to shape and control the destiny of an ordinary individual is perhaps the best known characteristic of the overused term (particularly by annoying people like me) Kafkaesque.

Orson Welles was a theatrical prodigy who before he was thirty had put the shit up a large chunk of New York with the famous radio adaption of War of the Worlds and written, directed, starred in and presumably did the poster for Citizen Kane, usually pegged as being the greatest film ever made.

After this blinding start, Welles became a sort of exile from the mainstream of Hollywood film production (despite popping up to do Touch of Evil in the fifties) for any number of reasons including creative control, income tax trouble and possibly the collossal catering budget any film he worked on would require. He made films in Europe and did the odd bit of acting but as he got older he became more marginalised and ended up paying the bills by doing sherry commercials and heavy metal/prog rock voiceovers. Orson Welles ended his days as the voice of a cartoon robot (or something) in the Transformers movie, a terrible waste. Of course now everyone bangs on about what a complete genius he was, including the people who probably wouldn't have given him the steam off their piss when he was doing those adverts for frozen peas.

Welles once said "I am a complete pessimist, but I'm immune to despair", the sort of person who is naturally cynical about the world around him and the people who inhabit it. Yet with the desire and confidence to give voice to such feelings rather than wallowing in them. Which is as good a reason as any for explaining why he chose to adapt The Trial for the screen.

Able to retain complete control of the project only by working within exacting constraints, Welles filmed across several countries using real locations rather than sets, often utilising abandoned buildings such as the vast Gare d'Orsay in Paris. Such seemingly guerilla film-making tactics might lead you expect some kind of ultra-real Ken Loach kind of vibe but nothing could be further from the truth. The Trial is one of the most visually astonishing films I have ever seen, the film-noir cinematography marrying perfectly with the subject matter to compound the surreal, nightmare experience of the protagonist.

Anthony Perkins (as K) is constantly dwarfed by huge functional spaces, hemmed in by lines of perspective and picked out by swathes of light. As a result he appears to be the subject of an experiment, like rat in a maze being toyed with for an unknown malignent purpose. This seems entirely consistent with both the plot and style of the novel.

Orson Welles also tried to make films of Heart of Darkness and Catch-22, neither of which saw the light of day, although he did get to play General Dreedle in Mike Nichol's film of Heller's novel and was offered the role of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Based on the way in which he adapted The Trial it would have been fascinating to see how those films would have turned out. I guess the difficulty is that with the level of finance and resources needed to realise such films, the level of creative control available would have been heavily compromised. With The Trial, Welles was entirely his own boss and this may well be the reason that I have seen it written that he considered this to be his finest film above even Citzen Kane.

Some images from The Trial (1962)

The kind of links that like two steaks and a bottle of whisky for lunch...

Orson Welles: An incomplete education

From the Senses of Cinema web site

Franz Kafka: Das Schloss

Big Kafka resource from the Modern Word web site, don't worry - it's not in German

Britain Has Become a Kafkaesque Nightmare

An article from the Sunday Herald by Muriel Gray.

Orson Welles: Pea Advert Out-takes

Yes, really - and taking it a touch seriously. I think he might have had a drink or two. Nearly as funny as the Tom Baker one.