‘The Trial‘ (1962) is – in my opinion – the second peak of Orson Welles‘s directing career, along with ‘Citizen Kane’. Welles himself considered it his best film. ‘The Trial‘ is the title of two masterpieces: one literary – Franz Kafka‘s novel – and the other cinematic – Orson Welles‘ film. It is a demonstration at the highest possible artistic level of the stupidity of the question ‘which was better – the book or the film?’ and of the impossibility of comparing quality works of two arts – literature and film – which have such different means of expression at their disposal. I re-watched the film, or rather the recovered version (the original had long been considered lost) which was qualitatively improved. Like any other artistic work at this level, each re-watch is an opportunity for discovery and deepening.
Joseph K. is visited at dawn by the police. He is investigated and suspected. He does not know what the charges are and will never find out, but he knows that he lives in a system in which everyone is being watched and anyone can be suspected, tried, convicted. Can one try to prove innocence without knowing what the accusation is? Do lawyers help? Can one find defense in churches and solace in faith? Can love or physical attraction change anything? ‘The Trial’ is a parable of the monstrosity of systems based on fear, of the perverse deformation of justice into its opposite.
Orson Welles created, together with Anthony Perkins, a prototype of the model citizen who becomes a victim of the system. Much has been written about the relationships of the character Joseph K. in the film with women and about the fact that Welles allegedly used the actor’s identity to instill ambiguity in his character. The result is concentrated in a few masterful scenes in which Perkins appears with Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. Welles cast himself in the role of the lawyer, reminding us what a great actor he was too. The cinematography belongs to Edmond Richard who was on his debut film. He would work with Welles in a few more films, then work later with Bunuel.. We find many of Welles‘ cinematic ideas from previous films: the huge shades, the low lighting of the figures or the alternation of very long shots with very short shots. Welles would have liked to film in Kafka’s Prague, but this was not possible in the continent divided in 1962 by iron curtains and walls, so he used Yugoslavia as an Eastern European setting, adding the Gare d’Orsay (abandoned and in semi-ruin, before being renovated and becoming a museum) for the interiors of Joseph K’s nightmares.
Political cinema has a controversial name, because many ‘political’ films are manifestos rather than works of art. ‘The Trial‘ proves that it can be done differently. It is a profound, bold, visionary film and at the same time a political film, just like the novel written by Kafka in the first decades of the century that had not yet seen the Holocaust, the Gulag, the cultural revolution or the killing fields. As a mature filmmaker, Welles was proving that he remained the politically engaged, but before all, one of the great film directors of the 20th century.