Ian (Flash Review)Criterion needs to remaster and give commentaries for this film. I have to admit I watched this film three times before I sent it back. Highly unusual. 1st) didn't give it proper focus; 2nd) proper focus yet the plot left me with questions; 3rd) clarified some things but still left with questions. The cinematography blew me away. Add a story that is intriguing and puzzling as it seems to straddle the line of surrealism; mainly cognitive but partially visual. The film is based on a Kafka book and every scene was thoughtfully framed to help tell the tale. The backbone of the plot is a man is awoken from bed with a strange man standing in his room declaring that he has been arrested and must stand trial. Yet nobody can or will tell him what he is accused of! He wanders through unusual places and buildings and tries to figure out what he is accused of. Will he learn the accusations against him? Will he be found guilty or innocent? This film makes you think and find symbolism in the visuals and will keep you pondering it for a while.

Scott44 ***Good review from StudlyFoxie ("The Best Legal Drama or Paranoia Film Ever Made", StudlyFoxie from Boston, Mass, 18 April 2004). Also, excellent background info on Kafka and Welles from Michael Coy ("The Logic Of A Dream", Michael Coy from London, England, 29 December 1999).***"The Trial (1952, Orson Welles​)," a surrealistic nightmare​, is audacious. Liberated from studio interference, Welles indulges in his love of visual oppression and penetrating diction. Distancing himself from mere mortals who would peer through a camera lens in order to create what has been made before, Welles serves up a uniquely uncompromising expressionistic sojourn, his personal favorite of his catalogue. While it could be tighter the chutzpah on display makes it required viewing for cinephiles . Based loosely on Franz Kafka​'s story, Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) wakes up one morning to discover that several police officers have entered his bedroom in order to place him under arrest. The grim authorities never disclose the charges. While not taken into custody, everything that Josef K. says and does becomes potential evidence against him.After a conversation with his landlord Mrs. Grubach (Madeleine Robinson), Josef uses the stress of the moment to make a long- delayed romantic connection with his night-club-working neighbor Marika Burstner (Jeanne Moreau). Marika is terrified of fraternizing with Josef out of concern the landlord will evict her for it. Sure enough, Marika subsequently disappears. In a memorable nighttime outdoor scene, Josef pleads for a disabled woman pulling a trunk with Marika's belongings to tell him what happened to Marika, but she won't. Josef periodically returns to his nightmarish workplace, where approximately 500 of his colleagues operate sewing machines in unison. The authorities move slowly, but eventually they compel Josef to appear before a makeshift tribunal. As with Josef's workplace, it is teeming with people. The Magistrate of the proceeding grants Josef legal protection in the form of the "Advocate." The mostly-bedridden barrister (Orson Welles), who first appears beneath an impressive cloud of tobacco smoke, is never helpful to Josef. The Advocate has a comely live-in nursemaid Leni (Romy Schnieder) who gets turned on when she meets men accused by the State of some crime. Another exceptionally beautiful woman, Hilda, has the same sexual turn-on. The smoldering, traffic-accident-inducing Elsa Martinelli​ (at the time a very successful Italian fashion model), portrays a second potential love interest that Josef has little interest in. Either Josef is too stressed out to accept the overtures of Leni and Hilda, or perhaps Welles is commenting on Anthony Perkins​'s real-life homosexuality. There are clear parallels between Josef's ordeal and Orson Welles's own. Despite his prodigious talents, Hollywood big-shots would not produce his films, forcing Welles to work abroad with meager budgets. It is useful to compare the moments where Josef is speaking despairingly to his accusers with what Orson might tell the Hollywood moguls who refuse to work with him.Shot in Black and White, "The Trial" is often dazzling. There is little doubt that this is the best use of the Gare d'Orsay location (a former train station in Paris). Welles applies his trademark deep focus, creating a dreamlike atmosphere. His backgrounds are often replete with detail. Moving to the auditory qualities, Welles's fondness of jazz music is apparent when he introduces it during a particularly odd scene when Josef visits an artist's studio. The cast is very theatrical, and the voices are generally all compelling. No cast member's voice is more distinctive and memorable than Welles's familiar baritone, so unrivaled in cinema. (BTW, Welles dubbed in other voices in the cast.) The conversation is very fast-paced; small talk is rare in this authoritarian society. While dark, relentless and mystifying at times, "The Trial" has moments that are really powerful. If Welles had trimmed about 15 minutes or so it would have been even better. After all, Kafka's writing is notably economical.Cinephiles are encouraged to take this in. While this era has its own totalitarian nightmare crushing working people into dust, there are no artists working today with the audacity of Orson Welles.

pierce-wong Contains Some Spoilers! Reading Kafka's The Trial was very useful in after watching Welles's adaptation in that I was able to spot out various little changes to the plot. Most are minor but Welles manages to fit what happens in weeks in the book to over a single day in the film. I did feel as if some parts were a bit rushed but I guess Welles was trying to cut production-time and get the film in by a certain date. He also even plays the role of the Lawyer Huld, which was something I didn't realize till he confronts K in the scene in the chapel with the projection slide. If you're a fan of the book this film is very very visually striking and the acting by Perkins and Schineider is flawless. It lives up to the film in many ways but the only negative aspects were that the book captures the atmosphere better and more fluid.

kurosawakira Welles was able to finish to his liking only eight projects, of which this is one. Others were taken away from him, most of them butchered by the studio and producers. That's only eight films during a period of 37 years. All of this because of one citizen Kane.It's a real tragedy that Welles would be unable to finish most of the things he worked on after this, the two sweet expectations being "Chimest at Midnight (1965) and "F for Fake" (1973), the latter which I think is his best film (whatever that means). No wonder then that Welles found such a resounding autobiographical level in this, and in retrospect considered it to be his best film.I'm not at all into reading too much into the lives of filmmakers as some kind of key to understanding and enjoying their work, but this case is different. Keeping in mind that here we have a self-confessed best film of a genius whose art was largely taken away from him, the final image of the huge open doors, Welles narrating the credits and saying "I'm Orson Welles" is as scintillating a moment one can get. The simplest of moments, but full of such release, dreaming and justice, such final resolve that it's overpowering.A refined work of dazzling visual mastery, assured and lucid. Welles is a revolutionary, not only a master of the eye, what we see, but also a master of editing. He's so radically different from anything I've ever seen that not even Wong, the modern maven, quite compares.And remember what money this has been made with! The space, basically that empty building, exhaustively utilized. Everything works, since all is out of joint, Perkins embodying this feeling of disconnect, stuttering around with strange confidence, emphasizing Kafka's bleakly hilarious and oppressively suffocating atmosphere that only he can paint.A puzzle, sure; a labyrinth, most certainly.