The Trial by Orson Welles: A Critical Analysis

The Trial (1962) By Ben Bourgon and Caroline Klimek

alternative poster by Swoboda @DeviantArt
Sunday, March 25, 2012

Topics of Discussion

• Reviews of The Trial

• Production

• Adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial

• Opening Sequence

• Women of Josef K

• Dream Logic, Surrealism, The Absurd

• Mise-en-scene, expressionism


Mixed reactions

“An agonizing experience” - Charles Higham,
The Films of Orson Welles (1970)
“An astonishing work, and a revelation of the man” –
David Thomson, Rosebud (1997)

“I’d be lying if I said that watching The Trial was a
pleasant experience.” – Sam Woolf

“…this ﬁlm was deeply confusing.” – Adam Cunliffe

…the ﬁlm was an artful rant, exquisitely composed
but humourlessly written. – Parker Mott


Production
“But that’s what makes those kind of
people great, and you have to love
them, because they’ve made hundred
of pictures without any money. And
here they were, willing to go ahead
with me when nobody else was, and I
was most grateful to them for that...
and gave me absolute freedom from
beginning of the picture to ﬁnal cut.”
~ Orson Welles, (This is Orson Welles, pg. 246)


Gare d’Orsay


Welles’ Adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial


Adaptation

“Having read The Trial (albeit a while ago), I was very
interested going into this film to see how Welles would
translate this absurdist story onto film. I personally was
very impressed by Welles, and as someone who usually
cringes at film adaptations, thought he did a very good
job of capturing the confusion of Kafka’s novel. – Lisa
Aalders


Opening Sequence


Women in The Trial

“There has to be something said about the role of women in
this ﬁlm. They all hold so much power in their ability to
render Mr. K helpless in some way. They all talk in such
circular ways or sex is involved. They are always on his
"case" (ﬁguratively and literally). […]The women play a
strange role in his world.”

– Avalon McLean-Smits


How do you see the role of women within this
ﬁlm? Is this simply a 1960’s male fantasy or is the
situation more complex than that?


The Many
Women Of Josef
K’s “Life”


Dream Logic
Peter Bogdanovich: I think it is like some terrible dream.

Orson Welles: But it isn’t a reproduction of a dream – that’s a very important
point to make.’

Peter Bogdanovich: It gives you the feeling of a dream.


Interpreting Dreams:
Condensation and Displacement

Condensation: “A dream object stands for several
associations and ideas[…]”

Displacement: “A dream object's emotional signiﬁcance
is separated from its real object or content and
attached to an entirely different one.”


The Surreal vs. The Absurd

“Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one
proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any
other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of
thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason,
outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.”
– Andre Bréton, The Surrealist Manifesto

Absurdism, n. A philosophy based on the belief that
the universe is irrational and meaningless and that
the search for order brings the individual into conﬂict
with the universe” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary


“A symbol hunter’s dream” in The Trial?

“It’s full of do-it-
yourself stuff. You can
make your own
symbols, if you want
to. But there isn’t a
single symbol in it.” –
Orson Welles


Mise-en-scéne

“For me, the use of setting was crucial in
conveying emotion and meaning. Welles staged
the action in either elaborate, lofty spaces or
claustrophobic and conﬁned ones, making use of
scaffolding, passage ways/halls, oversize doors,
etc…” – Katie Squires-Thomson


Everyman

vs.

The
Monster

Behind Bars


The Sexual Divide


World of Men

World of Women


Style


Wide Angles


Close-ups


K’s Apartment Long Take…


…to paranoia at Titorelli’s


Lighting


Climactic Sequence


The Trial or The Third Man?


The Trial by Orson Welles

“I feel the autobiographical quality unfolds in the
style, which is perpetually fraught with paranoia
and disorientation, very much vis-a-vis Touch of
Evil, only The Trial maximizes on the degradative
side of the male consciousness. The Trial,
therefore, comes off as that ﬁlm where Welles's
diary ﬂew open, and his personal secrets
disseminated on screen.” – Parker Mott


Is this ﬁlm consistent with your conception of
Welles? Has his full artistic control on this work
revealed anything to you about Welles as a
ﬁlmmaker?


Ending


Ending

Q: Do you see the ending as a
mistake? What is its effect within the
movie as a whole, does it ﬁt?


Fin


Sources
• Berthomé, Jean-Pierre and François Thomas. Orson Welles At Work. New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2006.

• Bogdanovich, Peter and Orson Welles. This is Orson Welles. Ed. Jonathan Rosenbaum. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.!

• Modern Film Scripts - The Trial: A Film by Orson Welles. Trans. Nicholas Fry. NEw York: Simon and Schuster, 1970.

• Orson Welles: Interviews. Ed. Mark W. Estrin. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2002.

• Perspectives on Orson Welles. Ed. Morris Beja. New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1995.

• Prescot Tonguete, Peter. Orson Welles Remembered: Interviews with His Actors, Editors, Cinematographers and Magicians. London: McFarland & Company, Inc.,
Publishers, 2007.

• Rasmussen, Randy. Orson Welles: Six Films Analyzed,, Scene by Scene. London: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2006.

• Thomson, David. Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles. New York: Vintage, 1997


The Trial by Orson Welles: A Critical Analysis

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The Trial by Orson Welles: A Critical Analysis