Le procès (1962)

Director:

Orson Welles

Writers:

Franz Kafka (novel)
Orson Welles (screenplay)

Release Date:

30 March 1963 (Italy)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Fantasy | Mystery | Thriller

Plot:

An unassuming office worker is arrested and stands trial, but he is never made aware of his charges.

Plot Keywords:

Big Brother | Surrealism | Courtroom | Paranoia | Guilt Complex

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Anthony Perkins	...	Josef K.
Jeanne Moreau	...	Marika Burstner
Romy Schneider	...	Leni
Elsa Martinelli	...	Hilda
Suzanne Flon	...	Miss Pittl
Orson Welles	...	Albert Hastler (The Advocate)
Akim Tamiroff	...	Bloch
Madeleine Robinson	...	Mrs. Grubach
Arnoldo Foà	...	Inspector A
Fernand Ledoux	...	Chief Clerk of the Law Court
Michael Lonsdale	...	Priest
Max Buchsbaum	...	Examining Magistrate
Max Haufler	...	Uncle Max
Maurice Teynac	...	Deputy Manager
Wolfgang Reichmann	...	Courtroom Guard

Also Known As:

Der Prozess (West Germany)
Il processo (Italy)
The Trial (USA)

Runtime:

118 min | USA:107 min (TV version : 1984)

Country:

France | Italy | West Germany | Yugoslavia

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Optiphone) (source format)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | Finland:K-12 (re-rating: 1981) | Finland:K-16 (original rating: 1963) | Portugal:M/12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | New Zealand:PG | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG | West Germany:16 (bw)

Filming Locations:

Gare d'Orsay, Paris 7, Paris, France

Company:

Paris-Europa Productions

Trivia:

Orson Welles called this his best film.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Narrator: Before the law, there stands a guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. May he hope to enter at a later time? That is possible, said the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He'd been taught that the law was to be accessible to every man...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "What's My Line?: (1963-02-17)" (1963)

Soundtrack:

Adagio in G

Orson Welles's Best Movie

When asked on the IMDb poll to enter the name of my favorite movie, I at first thought it an impossible task. Once this one entered my mind, though, the contest was over.

The lifetime masterpiece of a master of filmmaking, "The Trial" is Orson Welles's finest film, even surpassing "Touch of Evil." Somber, brooding, sometimes even claustrophobic, "The Trial" is a surrealistic safari through the worlds of law, employment and interpersonal relationships.

The melancholy strains of the artistically deployed Adagio by Albinoni underscore the mood of the film, shot mostly at twilight or indoors by night in a tangle of nightmarish sets that extend to infinity. Even scenes shot in broad daylight seem cold and devoid of nourishment in this cosmos of interminable, infinitesimal complexity which utterly lacks a heart.

Anthony Perkins (Joseph K.) is mass of contradictions, at once sympathetic, boyish, paranoid, angry, declamatory and most of all surpassingly frustrated by the futility of attempting to deal with a society that both demands mechanistic perfection of him and at the same time exhibits a persistent apathy toward his continued existence as well as a bureaucratic attempt to destroy it.

He seems inadvertently to hurt everyone with whom he comes in contact, ostensibly the cause of people getting thrown out of their dwellings, schools, jobs, marriages and other situations, all due to his benign actions which in any sane world would be completely unconnected with the tragedies they somehow appear to create. But in the Kafka/Welles society, they just lead to blame and further accusations. In his helplessness, his innocence and his utter bafflement, Perkins is thoroughly disarming.

Welles is positively diabolical as The Advocate, who, like everyone else connected with the Court, is not of any assistance or support to the accused. Rather, he seems to exist only to hurl vague accusations at Joseph K. - which the poor man is somehow expected to understand beforehand and even think are justified - and to exact payment for same.

Romy Schneider is outstanding as The Advocate's cook/housekeeper/nursemaid/concubine, the only person in the story who shows Joseph K. any genuine affection, odd though the form it takes may be. Other unforgettable and universally strange characters populate this odyssey into oblivion, such as the club-footed landlady doggedly dragging a trunk along an empty railroad track into the fading twilight while politely trying to refrain from telling Joseph K. how lowly she regards him.

The movie is fairly divergent from the book, which it inspired me to read. For example, the movie comes to a conclusion, while the unfinished book does not. In most ways, though, I find the movie more memorable, haunting and downright disturbing. Its skillfully crafted mesh of images and symbols which resonate at a level deeper than the conscious will find themselves recurring to the viewer unbidden for years to come.