Le Proces - Film (Movie) Plot and Review

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(The Trial)

France-West Germany-Italy, 1962

Director: Orson Welles

Production: Paris Europa Productions, Hisa-Film (West Germany), and FI.C.IT (Italy); black and white, 35mm; running time: 120 minutes. English and German versions: 118 minutes. Italian version: 100 minutes. Released December 1962, Paris. Filmed 26 March 1962-June 1962 in the Studio de Boulogne; and on location in Paris and Zagreb.

Producers: Yves Laplanche, Miguel Salkind and Alexander Salkind with Robert Florat; screenplay: Orson Welles, from the novel by Franz Kafka; photography: Edmond Richard; editor: Yvonne Martin; sound engineer: Guy Vilette; sound mixer: Jacques Lebreton; art director: Jean Mandaroux; set dressers: Jean Charpentier and Francine Coureau; scenic artist: André Labussière; music: Jean Ledrut; special effects editor: Denise Baby; costume designers: Helene Thibault with Mme. Brunet and Claudie Thary.

Cast: Anthony Perkins ( Joseph K ); Jean Moreau ( Miss Burstner ); Romy Schneider ( Leni ); Elsa Martinelli ( Hilda ); Suzanne Flon ( Pittle ); Orson Welles ( Hastler ); Akin Tamiroff ( Bloch ); Madeleine Robinson ( Mrs. Grubach ); Arnoldo Foà ( Inspector A ); Fernand Ledoux ( Chief clerk ); Michel Lonsdale ( Priest ); Max Buchsbaum ( Examining magistrate ); Max Haufler ( Uncle Max ); Maurice Teynac ( Deputy manager ); Wolfgang Reichmann ( Courtroom guard ); Thomas Holtzmann ( Bert ); Billy Kearns and Jess Hahn ( Assistant inspectors ); Maydra Shore ( Irmie ); Carl Studer ( Man in leather ); Jean-Claude Remoleux and Raoul Delfosse ( Policemen ); Titorelli ( X ).

Publications

Script:

Welles, Orson, The Trial , New York, 1970.

Books:

Cowie, Peter, The Cinema of Orson Welles , London, 1965.

Wollen, Peter, Orson Welles , London, 1969.

Bessy, Maurice, Orson Welles: An Investigation into His Films and Philosophy , New York, 1971.

Higham, Charles, The Films of Orson Welles , Berkeley, 1971.

Bogdanovich, Peter, and Orson Welles, This Is Orson Welles , New York, 1972.

McBride, Joseph, Orson Welles , London, 1972.

Cowie, Peter, A Ribbon of Dreams , New York, 1973.

Wagner, Geoffrey, The Novel and the Cinema , Cranbury, New Jersey, 1975.

Gottesman, Ronald, editor, Focus on Orson Welles , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1976.

McBride, Joseph, Orson Welles: Actor and Director , New York, 1977.

Bazin, André, Orson Welles: A Critical View , New York, 1978.

Naremore, J., The Magic World of Orson Welles , New York, 1978.

Valentinetti, Claudio M., Orson Welles , Florence, 1981.

Bergala, Alain, and Jean Narboni, editors, Orson Welles , Paris, 1982.

Andrew, Dudley, Film in the Aura of Art , Princeton, 1984.

Higham, Charles, Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius , New York, 1985.

Leaming, Barbara, Orson Welles: A Biography , New York, 1985.

Parra, Daniele, and Jacques Zimmer, Orson Welles , Paris, 1985.

Weis, Elisabeth, and John Belton, editors, Film Sound: Theory and Practice , New York, 1985.

Taylor, John Russell, Orson Welles: A Celebration , London, 1986.

Cotten, Joseph, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere , New York, 1987.

Wood, Bret, Orson Welles: A Bio-Bibliography , Westport, 1990.

Howard, James, The Complete Films of Orson Welles , Secaucus, 1991.

Beja, Morris, Perspective on Orson Welles , New York, 1995.

Thomson, David, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles , New York, 1996.

Callow, Simon, Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu , New York, 1997.

Welles, Orson, This Is Orson Welles , New York, 1998.

Articles:

Stanbrook, Alan, "The Heroes of Welles," in Film (London), March-April 1961.

"Prodigal Revived," in Time (New York), 29 June 1962.

"Orson Welles," in Film (London), Autumn 1962.

Fleischer, Richard, "Case for the Defense," in Films and Filming (London), October 1962.

Martinez, Enrique, "The Trial of Orson Welles," in Films and Filming (London), October 1962.

Gretchen, F., and Herman Weinberg, in Film Culture (New York), Spring 1963.

Crowther, Bosley, in New York Times , February 1963.

Pechter, William, "Trials," in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1963–64.

Labarthe, André S., "Pour introduire au procès d'Orson Welles," in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), 15 February 1963.

Mekas, Jonas, in Village Voice (New York), 21 February 1963.

Shivas, Mark, in Movie (London), February-March 1963.

Hart, Henry, in Films in Review (New York), March 1963.

Lane, John Francis, in Films and Filming (London), March 1963.

Callenbach, Ernest, in Film Quarterly (Berkeley), Summer 1963.

Cutts, John, in Films and Filming (London), December 1963.

Cobos, Juan, Miguel Rubio, and J. A. Pruneda, "A Trip to Quixoteland: Conversations with Orson Welles," in Cahiers du Cinema in English (New York), June 1966.

Nevitt, Brian, in Take One (Montreal), September-October 1966.

Daney, Serge, "Welles in Power," in Cahiers du Cinema in English (New York), September 1967.

Bosseno, C., in Image et Son (Paris), May 1973.

Carroll, N., "Welles and Kafka," in Film Reader (Evanston, Illinois), no. 3, 1978.

Goodwin, J., "Orson Welles' The Trial: Cinema and Dream," in Dreamworks , Fall 1981.

"L'Image des mots," in Amis du Film et de la Télévision (Paris), March 1982.

Lev, P., "Three Adaptations of The Trial ," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), July 1984.

Beja, M., "Where You Can't Get at Him: Orson Welles and the Attempt to Escape from Father," in Literature/Film Quarterly (Salisbury, Maryland), January 1985.

Edelman, P., "Sans laisser d'addresse," in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), November 1985.

Berthome, J.-P., and F. Thomas, "Sept anneen noir et blanc," in Positif (Paris), July-August 1992.

Thomas, F., "Michael Lonsdale et Le Proces ," in Positif (Paris), no. 378, July/August 1992.

Nielsen, N.-A., "Magten: et sporgsmal om tid," in Kosmorama (Copenhagen), Spring 1993.

Friedman, R. -M., "La specularite diffractee: mise en abyme et debut de film," in Semiotica , vol. 112, no. 1/2, 1996.

Dottorini, D., "Il cinema come ri-narrazione," in Filmcritica (Siena), vol. 46, no. 466, July 1996.

Lucas, Tim, " The Trial ," in Video Watchdog (Cincinnati), no. 47, 1998.

* * *

Orson Welles would seem to be the perfect director to bring the tortured fiction of Franz Kafka to the screen. The deep chiaroscuro, mordant humor, and labyrinthian qualities of his films are sufficiently Kafkaesque to suggest a sympathetic match between novelist and filmmaker. Yet the filmed version of The Trial brought forth a chorus of negative reviews, especially from the Anglo-American press. Plagued by its own set of problems (and what recent Welles film has not been), The Trial elicited as violent and negative notices on its initial release as any garnered by a major director within recent memory. It was a critical lashing that has been salved only recently by those film commentators who have had the luxury of a broader perspective with which to consider The Trial within the context of the development of Welles's cinema.

The initial problems Welles encountered were due to his having adapted a modern literary classic, provoking a spate of reviews comparing Welles's adaptation to the original story, and since Welles had had the audacity to tamper with the novel's plot line, such as it is, he fell afoul of the critics. The largest discrepancy between the film and the fiction, however, was in Welles's making of Joseph K into a more active character. Welles later admitted in an interview that the passivity of Kafka's anti-hero just did not fit with his own world view. After the death camps and advent of the atomic age, Welles felt that Kafka's morality tale needed updating, and in typical Wellesian style he did so.

The major problems the critics pounced on had less to do with the film's faithfulness, however, than with the film's opacity. A number of critics claimed that the film was even less understandable than the book; furthermore, they found the movie boring. The attacks against The Trial remained fairly uniform in British and American papers and weekly magazines. In more recent assessments of Welles's career— James Naremore's The Magic World of Orson Welles , for example— the film has received much more careful and appreciative treatment. Naremore finds the movie a fascinating study of repressed sexuality, and he is at pains to place the film within the Welles canon, especially by making comparisons with The Lady from Shanghai and Touch of Evil. If the film remains little shown today, at least it has assumed a respectful place for students of Welles's cinema.

The Trial may not be much liked, but at least it is now dealt with. Even one of the movie's most severe critics, William Pechter, admitted that in spite of its overall failure, Welles had pushed mise-en-scène beyond any concern for narrative or dramatic necessity into a realm of purely visual effects, into the realm of pure cinema. At least Pechter found the experiment an interesting one. The use of the abandoned railway station as the central office set, which caused one critic to remark that the film seemed dominated by its decor, produced a brilliantly evocative visual representation of the post-war world. Moreover for Peter Cowie, The Trial is Welles's finest film since Citizen Kane , partly because it conveys so perfectly "the terrifying vision of the modern world" that is characteristic of Kafka's novel and partly because the film so clearly bears the stamp of Welles's personality, to rival only Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil in this respect. Cowie wrote that Welles had succeeded in not only translating the book into film but also in creating a cinematic environment that revealed the complexity of Kafka's world and reflected the inability of the human mind to grasp complexity which is "the tragic moral of the novel and of this extraordinary, hallucinatory film."

—Charles L. P. Silet