The Trial (1962)In law, a trial is a proceeding where evidence and arguments are used to determine the merit of an accusation. However, a "trial" is also an ordeal that forces one to adapt to the discomfort of a situation, and alter their methods to overcome it. In The Trial (1962), Orson Welles' adaptation of Franz Kafka's book of the same name, the hapless office manager, Josef K. (Anthony Perkins), endures both interpretations of a trial--more of the latter than the former. His ambiguous arrest and the "charge" against him is never defined, and the bureaucratic quagmire that he is dragged into carves away at his sanity inch by inch.
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The Trial is a paranoid nightmare from start to finish, an anxiety-riddled fugue that one might experience in the worst kinds of dreams, and much of the film is deliberately dream-like, deprived of logic. Orson Welles--who narrates, and plays the languid advocate, Hastler--speaks to this in the preamble to the film, a parable called "Before the Law". This parable describes a man from the country who seeks admittance to "The Law", but is arbitrarily prevented from access under the threat of violence or discomfort by a guard. The guard's purpose is solely to inconvenience the man, which begs the question about who the law really serves. This story parallels the plot of The Trial, like a pantomime of the events that befall Josef. The editing implies that this introduction is a dream of Josef's; when he awakens to find a stranger in his apartment, insinuating he is with the police and asking a bunch of vaguely accusatory questions, it is as if Josef's dream continues. Josef maintains a nervous and suspicious attitude, which makes it seem that he could have something to hide. It's also reasonable to assume that his reaction is motivated by a lack of caffeine and sleep combined with the shock of finding a stranger in his domicile, which adds to the ambiguity as to whether Josef is guilty or not of whatever unnamed crime he supposedly committed. The suggestion that Josef is a criminal is overshadowed by sympathy for the psychologically tormented man, who is never able to get a straight answer about his accusation from anyone, not even his disinterested lawyer, Hastler.
"Kafkaesque" is a phrase used to describe the paranoid and oppressive tenor that occupies the tone of the author's work. People's jobs are treated as more important than their external lives in The Trial, evidenced by the police interrupting Josef's night out at the theater and dragging him off to a surprise inquisition, ostensibly to avoid interfering with his work schedule. Josef is a mid-level bureaucrat, and brags to his landlady, Mrs. Grubach (Madeleine Robinson), about how hard it is for clients to see him. His office is filled with the chattering keys of typewriters, and filled with orderly secretaries. The world surrounding the nondescript city where Josef lives is rundown and bland, devoid of life and color--quite a feat for a film already in black and white. Hastler's apartment and the law courts are swollen with old paperwork strewn about, files upon files that are archived for no apparent reason. When Hastler's nurse and mistress, Leni (Romy Schneider), tries to seduce Josef in Hastler's archival room, they roll about in a veritable sea of prior cases that wash over them like waves on the sea. When Josef goes to the law courts, there are swarms of emaciated men and women outside. They stare blankly into the night and wear numbered plaques around their necks, like victims of the Holocaust. The Trial looks both absurd and all-too familiar to anyone who has experienced the maddening bureaucracy and indifference of the legal system, made more terrifying by how powerless and helpless Josef is made to feel. When Josef runs into a fellow client of Hastler's, a haggard old man named Bloch (Akim Tamiroff), he begins to understand just how hopeless it is to participate in this demented game, and his ultimate fate if he follows this path: to become another "dog" of his advocate.
The Trial is a psychological film that is steeped in metaphor. Josef K. (who shares the same first initial of his last name with Kafka) is presented as an "everyman", although he has his own idiosyncrasies. He is nervous and shy around women; just as Josef has several tense encounters with figures of authority, he has almost as many with people to whom he feels sexual attraction. His neighbor is a dancer in a sleazy night club, an older but attractive woman Josef only knows as "Mrs. Burstner" (Jeanne Moreau). Josef uses the intrusion into her room by the police as an excuse to get into her room himself, but ends up irritating her with his ingratiating attitude and milquetoast thumb-twiddling, even if he manages to sneak a kiss. When his Uncle Max (Max Haufler) brings him to see Hastler, Josef is lured away by Leni, who implores him to come back and see him, even though it might compromise his "case". In one creepy scene, after it has been revealed that Leni is also intimate with Bloch, the three of them stare into the "maid's room" where Bloch has been holing up. The salacious Leni stands in the middle of them and tosses her head back to rest on both of their shoulders, giving the faintest intimation that she is suggesting a ménage à trois--Bloch even talks to Josef about his "unfaithfulness" to their mutual advocate by seeing other lawyers behind his back. Josef has an encounter with Hilda (Elsa Martinelli)--the wife of a courtroom guard--who reveals that she has been cheating on her husband with a law student. Hilda subsequently comes on to Josef, revealing her legs under the pretense of showing off the stockings her lover gave her as a gift. There is even the suggestion in Josef's tidy appearance and fastidious mannerisms--as well as the nameless "accusation" levied against him--that Josef is a homosexual, and his discomfort during these intimate encounters with women are a reflection of this. When he tries to implore Titorelli (William Chappell), an artist who paints the portraits of the judges, to use his influence with them to get a deferment or acquittal, the painter--who speaks with a jaunty lisp--appears to be coming on to Josef, circling him in the room as the eyes of little girls stare on and bear witness to his attempts to circumvent the unforgiving system.
Like the parable of "Before the Law", The Trial is a parable about the dangers of those who would use the law to tyrannize people. The fascism of this "Kafkaesque" world is so deeply entrenched that the accused are already condemned by virtue of being accused. Whatever passes for government in this world has consumed all other facets of life. Religion is tied up within the word of the law; the opening parable of the story is a well-known myth to men like Josef, likely taught to him in his equivalent of Sunday school, treated like a story from the apostles. Men like Hastler act as the "priests" of this complicated and arbitrary morass of a legal system, which has become so convoluted and vague, that their explanations are more like a muddied code, as though these advocates were "interpreting" the word of "Law" as a priest would the meaning of the Bible. This warped practice of divination is not designed to aid people like Josef, but to exploit them, to keep them servile to these high priests of jurisprudence. Madness and deception is the language of whatever corrupt rulers exist in this world, operating behind the shield of bureaucracy, making everyone else insane by degrees. Characters often ramble with meandering dialogue, exposing their anxiety in living in this corrupt dystopia. All people possessed of any form of power or authority are automatically inclined to use it to their advantage, and let it corrupt them. The police who intrude into Josef's apartment make him feel like he's doing something wrong by asking about what the charge against him is, or the identity of his accuser. Even the laws of nature seem to be driven insane by this ubiquitous lunacy. After Josef is pulled from his evening out and taken to the interrogation, he escapes and finds himself in a closet with the same two policemen getting flogged by a superior. When Josef leaves the room, disgusted at the corporal punishment, he finds himself back at work in the middle of a business day. How can this be? If time is forced to obey "laws" like physics, then when the law is distorted and riven, and the law is now a higher abstraction that has replaced God, then all bets are off. Josef's best efforts to tread water against this litigious undertow is fruitless--more like drowning--weighed down by the proverbial millstone of an arbitrary--even vindictive--system.
Recommended for: Fans of a bleak and cautionary tale about the dangers of a legal system exploited as a tool of fascists to keep its citizens under its boot heel. The Trial is a terrifying, nightmarish vision that plumbs the psychological depths of a man accused of a crime, and follows his phantasmagoric odyssey through a world gone mad with bureaucracy.
"Kafkaesque" is a phrase used to describe the paranoid and oppressive tenor that occupies the tone of the author's work. People's jobs are treated as more important than their external lives in The Trial, evidenced by the police interrupting Josef's night out at the theater and dragging him off to a surprise inquisition, ostensibly to avoid interfering with his work schedule. Josef is a mid-level bureaucrat, and brags to his landlady, Mrs. Grubach (Madeleine Robinson), about how hard it is for clients to see him. His office is filled with the chattering keys of typewriters, and filled with orderly secretaries. The world surrounding the nondescript city where Josef lives is rundown and bland, devoid of life and color--quite a feat for a film already in black and white. Hastler's apartment and the law courts are swollen with old paperwork strewn about, files upon files that are archived for no apparent reason. When Hastler's nurse and mistress, Leni (Romy Schneider), tries to seduce Josef in Hastler's archival room, they roll about in a veritable sea of prior cases that wash over them like waves on the sea. When Josef goes to the law courts, there are swarms of emaciated men and women outside. They stare blankly into the night and wear numbered plaques around their necks, like victims of the Holocaust. The Trial looks both absurd and all-too familiar to anyone who has experienced the maddening bureaucracy and indifference of the legal system, made more terrifying by how powerless and helpless Josef is made to feel. When Josef runs into a fellow client of Hastler's, a haggard old man named Bloch (Akim Tamiroff), he begins to understand just how hopeless it is to participate in this demented game, and his ultimate fate if he follows this path: to become another "dog" of his advocate.
The Trial is a psychological film that is steeped in metaphor. Josef K. (who shares the same first initial of his last name with Kafka) is presented as an "everyman", although he has his own idiosyncrasies. He is nervous and shy around women; just as Josef has several tense encounters with figures of authority, he has almost as many with people to whom he feels sexual attraction. His neighbor is a dancer in a sleazy night club, an older but attractive woman Josef only knows as "Mrs. Burstner" (Jeanne Moreau). Josef uses the intrusion into her room by the police as an excuse to get into her room himself, but ends up irritating her with his ingratiating attitude and milquetoast thumb-twiddling, even if he manages to sneak a kiss. When his Uncle Max (Max Haufler) brings him to see Hastler, Josef is lured away by Leni, who implores him to come back and see him, even though it might compromise his "case". In one creepy scene, after it has been revealed that Leni is also intimate with Bloch, the three of them stare into the "maid's room" where Bloch has been holing up. The salacious Leni stands in the middle of them and tosses her head back to rest on both of their shoulders, giving the faintest intimation that she is suggesting a ménage à trois--Bloch even talks to Josef about his "unfaithfulness" to their mutual advocate by seeing other lawyers behind his back. Josef has an encounter with Hilda (Elsa Martinelli)--the wife of a courtroom guard--who reveals that she has been cheating on her husband with a law student. Hilda subsequently comes on to Josef, revealing her legs under the pretense of showing off the stockings her lover gave her as a gift. There is even the suggestion in Josef's tidy appearance and fastidious mannerisms--as well as the nameless "accusation" levied against him--that Josef is a homosexual, and his discomfort during these intimate encounters with women are a reflection of this. When he tries to implore Titorelli (William Chappell), an artist who paints the portraits of the judges, to use his influence with them to get a deferment or acquittal, the painter--who speaks with a jaunty lisp--appears to be coming on to Josef, circling him in the room as the eyes of little girls stare on and bear witness to his attempts to circumvent the unforgiving system.
Like the parable of "Before the Law", The Trial is a parable about the dangers of those who would use the law to tyrannize people. The fascism of this "Kafkaesque" world is so deeply entrenched that the accused are already condemned by virtue of being accused. Whatever passes for government in this world has consumed all other facets of life. Religion is tied up within the word of the law; the opening parable of the story is a well-known myth to men like Josef, likely taught to him in his equivalent of Sunday school, treated like a story from the apostles. Men like Hastler act as the "priests" of this complicated and arbitrary morass of a legal system, which has become so convoluted and vague, that their explanations are more like a muddied code, as though these advocates were "interpreting" the word of "Law" as a priest would the meaning of the Bible. This warped practice of divination is not designed to aid people like Josef, but to exploit them, to keep them servile to these high priests of jurisprudence. Madness and deception is the language of whatever corrupt rulers exist in this world, operating behind the shield of bureaucracy, making everyone else insane by degrees. Characters often ramble with meandering dialogue, exposing their anxiety in living in this corrupt dystopia. All people possessed of any form of power or authority are automatically inclined to use it to their advantage, and let it corrupt them. The police who intrude into Josef's apartment make him feel like he's doing something wrong by asking about what the charge against him is, or the identity of his accuser. Even the laws of nature seem to be driven insane by this ubiquitous lunacy. After Josef is pulled from his evening out and taken to the interrogation, he escapes and finds himself in a closet with the same two policemen getting flogged by a superior. When Josef leaves the room, disgusted at the corporal punishment, he finds himself back at work in the middle of a business day. How can this be? If time is forced to obey "laws" like physics, then when the law is distorted and riven, and the law is now a higher abstraction that has replaced God, then all bets are off. Josef's best efforts to tread water against this litigious undertow is fruitless--more like drowning--weighed down by the proverbial millstone of an arbitrary--even vindictive--system.
Recommended for: Fans of a bleak and cautionary tale about the dangers of a legal system exploited as a tool of fascists to keep its citizens under its boot heel. The Trial is a terrifying, nightmarish vision that plumbs the psychological depths of a man accused of a crime, and follows his phantasmagoric odyssey through a world gone mad with bureaucracy.