The Trial is a 1962 French, Italian and German drama film, written and directed by Orson Welles, adapted from a book by the same name by Franz Kafka written in 1915. It was intended to be a black and absurdist comedy, but the difficult, dystopian nature of the story makes it quite difficult to take it really as a comedy.

Orson Welles

Orson Welles is an iconic figure in the history of cinema, as he created the movie cited the most often as "the best movie of all times: Citizen Kane, in 1941. He had a tumultuous career, got so many problems with the Hollywood studios. After his previous movie, "A Touch of Evil", he headed to Europe to finish his career.

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a Czech Jew writer, associated who wrote many books without being able to publish one during his lifetime but left a strong legacy.

Expressionism

Kafka's writings and Welles' cinematography can be associated to a genre called "expressionism". It is hard to define, but something like: to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. It's well known in movies depicting mental states of oppression.

Kafkaesque: having a nightmarish complex, bizarre, or illogical quality. It's also commonly used to describe complicated bureaucratic processes, generating anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness for the people who are trapped in it.

Production

In 1960, Welles was approached by producer Alexander Salkind who proposed him a list of 82 books to adapt on screen, Welles chose The Trial. But the producers didn't have money and the production faced many financial problems... It's a constant in Welles' career.

Welles didn't intended to play in the movie but ended up playing the lawyer, because "there was not more money to contract an actor of my caliber". He's literally the "Devil's advocate", the advocate and a central figure of the bureaucratic system.

In an interview, he mentioned about the main character: "I find in the book repeated indications that K is a pusher on his way out of the bureaucracy, not mister zero in the adding machine, not little mister nobody, but a young man very anxious to get ahead of this awful world".

"The Trial" is not an easy film. It has polarized critics and the public, between admirers of the work and haters. But it's a genuine gem of cinema, made by a master of this fine art, that we're happy to be able to share with you tonight.