The Trial, 1962.
Directed by Orson Welles.
Starring Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Akim Tamiroff, and Elsa Martinelli.
SYNOPSIS:
Let’s go down the classic film rabbit hole with a wonderful 4K restoration of Orson Welles’ 1962 movie The Trial, based on Franz Kafka’s novel. Starring Anthony Perkins in the main role, it’s the story of a government bureaucrat who finds himself in a series of ever-more bizarre situations. Criterion commissioned a new commentary track for this edition and included a few archival extras.
Like any great film, Orson Welles’ The Trial (1962) still resonates decades later (as, of course, does Franz Kafka’s unfinished 1952 novel on which it was based). Anthony Perkins plays the title role of Josef K., a career bureaucrat who wakes up one morning to find policemen in his rented room.
They’ve come to charge him with a crime, but they can’t say what it is. Everything Josef says brings further suspicion on him, and they take great interest in such things as an ovular shape under his carpet. He doesn’t help his case when he slips up and calls his phonograph (record player) a “pornograph.”
He’s told a case has been opened against him, but he’s not cuffed and led away. His landlady, however, now thinks worse of him, although his neighbor who works in a seedy club overnight now takes an interest in him she didn’t have before. When he goes to work, his boss is suspicious of his young cousin who has come to see him, thinking Josef may be having improper relations with her.
Josef’s workplace is a vast, warehouse-like room full of people who furiously type away. It’s not clear what all of them do, but this is a faceless bureaucracy, so of course it’s not really relevant. (I’m not 100% sure about this, but I think that office must have inspired the look of the workplace in Terry Gilliam’s brilliant Brazil.)
Our hero, if you can call him that, soon descends into a world full of dream-like logic as he tries to deal with the charges against him. Welles has a role as Josef’s attorney, a man known as “The Advocate” who spends most of his time in bed, offering vague promises of a legal defense that never seems to happen.
Undaunted, Josef pursues other avenues of vindication, but it all seems for naught. The ending, as you might imagine, is not one of triumph over the machinations of government, but that is, of course, the point of both Kafka’s novel and this film.
The Trial could be remade today as the story of someone having their Facebook account suspended for some vague offense that’s never clear, with attempts to appeal going nowhere. Or perhaps it could be the tale of someone trying to navigate government or corporate bureaucracy, attempting to clear up a vague problem that only gets worse. You could probably come up with many more ideas.
Criterion’s new 4K Ultra HD release of this film also includes a Blu-ray disc with the movie and the bulk of the extras. The print used here is the new 4K restoration that StudioCanal recently released in Europe and other parts of the world. I don’t have prior experience with this movie, but it looked great on my setup, and my understanding is that this is the first time The Trial has received a quality presentation on home video.
The company also commissioned a new commentary track by writer Joseph McBride, whose credits include What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career. As with many Criterion commentaries, this one fits the “film school in a box” mold and offers up a wide-ranging discussion of not just The Trial but also Welles himself and other related subjects.
That track is the only extra on the 4K Ultra HD platter, and it’s replicated on the Blu-ray, which contains the rest of the bonus features. There aren’t many of them, but they definitely emphasize quality over quantity.
The first one is Filming The Trial, an 84-minute Q&A session with Welles after a 1981 screening of the movie at the University of Southern California. The footage was originally meant for a documentary about the making of the film, but it, like several Welles projects, unfortunately, never happened. However, this is a worthwhile discussion to watch, especially for Welles fans.
Next up is Vive le cinema!, a 29-minute 1972 episode of a French TV series hosted by actress Jeanne Moreau, who interviews the director over lunch at the Ritz Paris hotel. Finally, we have Orson Welles, Architect of Light, a 24-minute interview with The Trial’s director of photography, Edmond Richard, who has plenty to say about the director’s distinct directorial style.
A trailer that was used to promote the 4K restoration rounds out the platter, and the usual printed material is a fold-out with an essay by writer Jonathan Lethem.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
Originally published October 15, 2023. Updated April 22, 2024.
