Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

bkoganbing I think filming Franz Kafka is probably more difficult than filming Ernest Hemingway. Getting all the meaning out of Hemingway's sparse prose has certainly been a challenge. But with Kafka and The Trial, how do you film inside a man's mind in an unnamed existential world?Well Orson Welles certainly gave it a try. The first time I watched The Trial I started a few times and gave up. I was determined to see it through and did this time. I did see it through and came away still not sure of what I saw.Anthony Perkins is the protagonist Jozef K. He's a nameless toiler in what Kafka correctly sees as a future age of information. Had the film been done today you would see Perkins as a nameless drone chained to a computer. But he's done something that has whatever authority there is most upset. He's under arrest though for a moment free on some futuristic version of bail on an unnamed charge.Civil liberties have certainly gone out the window. Kafka was not writing about an Anglo-Saxon society where one's innocent until proved guilty. Guilty as charged with little or no chance of proving yourself innocent.I'm not sure Welles had any fixed notions about filming this in the way he firmly knew his mind with his other and better films. He was experimenting here with some stream of consciousness type technique and I think he was attempting the impossible. He wrote some interesting vignettes for people Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Akim Tamiroff who offer varying degrees of sympathy for Perkins's plight, but all can really do nothing.The Trial is an interesting experiment, but it doesn't make it in my book.

souplipton The Trial is Orson Welles' attempt to adapt Franz Kafka's tale to the silver screen, and the success of that adaptation is an interesting case. The film's visual style and atmosphere are impeccable, but its plot seems to be tenuously put together. This is not surprising, as the source material was never completed by Kafka, and was never intended to be published. The book was assembled after his death by his executor out of the unordered (and sometimes unfinished) chapters which Kakfa had written. The adaptation deals with this by playing the tale as very surreal, which is brought out most excellently by the sets. Welles used an abandoned train station to construct his giant spacious sets, which evoke strange responses with their industrial decay, open work places of endless repetition, and claustrophobia. All the settings are strange and off-putting in the best of ways. The cinematography too is incredible, with exaggerated and unrealistic lighting picked up by the canted and unusual angles to create an unsettling effect. The cast also works wonderfully, as Perkins gives one of his best performances as the protagonist Joseph K. The filmic aspects of the work are all wonderfully executed, but the film doesn't quite pull it off. This is due to the problems with adapting a work which was itself unfinished. However, this shortcoming can be overlooked, as this is one of Welles' best works, a daring work of cinema to be enjoyed and appreciated.

RpF88 This film has a surrealistic language, a transcendentalist style, Wells' iconoplasticism, Kafka's philosophical anthropology, poetic imaging, and existentialist reflection.It is historically, culturally, politically and philosophically relevant.It is also relevant for cinematography studies (for its brilliant use of different lenses, lighting and composition of the shots), for actor directing studies (for the non naturalistic performances that make the film consistent) and film directing studies (for the non transparency of the style, representation and meaning).It should be in the top of the IMDb list so that everyone could know that they should absolutely see it as soon as possible.It is a remarkable achievement in film

George Wright The Trial is a psychological drama that deals with a state of mind we all experience at some time...fear. In this movie, we sense a Cold War atmosphere where anonymous and uncaring people threaten one man's freedom, dignity, happiness or even his life. Police officers invade the room of one citizen, played by Anthony Perkins, and charge him with an unknown crime. Later, he walks into a large chamber where he is face to face with what looks like the tyranny of mob rule. Director Orson Welles (who also acts in the movie) was not one to shy away from new ideas and this film takes the viewer through a sequence of settings that we might experience as a nightmare: shadows, strange voices and faces, creaking noises, and dark, empty spaces. What I felt watching this movie were the traumas when the terror fear becomes reality, as when thugs are given power to arrest people through trumped-up charges. Lives are turned upside down at a moment's notice. Fear of the authorities, the police, and others in positions of power is universal. All of us fear the heavy hand of authority, even if we don't experience it as a daily occurrence. Alfred Hitchcock talked about his fear of the police, and he explored one actual incident in a documentary/drama called The Wrong Man. The romantic scenes added some relief to the brooding atmosphere. Romy Schneider was particularly good and very beautiful. The movie is abstract and is meant to convey terror but does not tell us what the story is. I tried unsuccessfully to try to understand the plot because the sequence is rather disjointed. I think Welles wants the viewer to feel the overwhelming terror with only the broad outline of a story. In this he succeeds very well but the viewer may come away feeling confusion as well as terror.