Hello and welcome to my annual attempt at contributing to Criterion Month! This year, not only did I have the advantage of an extra month to prepare but also I drafted way more recent movies than Colin and John on average, so I had a light load to begin the month too. And yet… I still didn’t finish watching my first movie until just about midnight on the day I was supposed to post about it. What can I say at this point? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
Well tell that to noted trickster Orson Welles, the visionary who absolutely could have rested on his laurels after Citizen Kane but instead struggled hard his whole career to keep pushing his craft and earn his reputation as cinema’s ultimate auteur. The Trial came about two decades after Kane, when Welles’ projects were increasingly going unrealized and he had (for the second time) abandoned Hollywood for Europe. Perhaps Welles found some kinship with Franz Kafka, the author of the eponymous book Welles’ film is based on, who went unpublished and unappreciated in his time only for his literary executor to ignore his will and publish his unfinished manuscripts. Two struggling artistic titans, doomed to influence all the generations that came after them but rejected by their contemporaries. The only difference is their struggles were complete opposites: Welles couldn’t make the money men and audiences happy while Kafka was overcome with self-doubt and destroyed most of his work himself before anyone could read it. But I’d like to think they would have understood each other.
Understanding is one of the main themes of The Trial, or the lack thereof. The movie begins with a parable, narrated by Welles himself, called “Before the Law,” that both features in the novel The Trial and was published independently earlier, during Kafka’s lifetime. In the story, a man from the country comes to a great doorway seeking “the law,” as is every man’s right. A guard refuses to let the man through and warns him that within are even more doors and guards, each more powerful than the last. The man decides to wait at the door, fruitlessly offering the guard everything he owns as bribes but otherwise peacefully letting time pass. Years later, as the man is about to die of old age, he asks the guard why no one else has ever come since he’s been there. “No one else but you could ever have obtained admittance,” says the guard, “No one else could enter this door. This door was intended only for you. And now I am going to close it.” Narrator Welles explains that the logic of this story is like that of a dream… or a nightmare.
The next thing we see is a young man, Josef K. (Anthony Perkins), being awoken in bed by a stranger entering his room. The man does not identify himself or answer Josef’s questions, but Josef intuits he’s a policeman. Another detective enters and informs Josef he’s under arrest, although no one offers any explanation why he’s under arrest or what crime he’s being charged with. The strangers open the door to his neighbor, Miss Bürstner’s, room where three of Josef’s coworkers appear, apparently having provided some sort of evidence against Josef. The landlady, Mrs. Grubach (Madeleine Robinson), and Miss Bürstner (Jeanne Moreau) reappear but offer poor consolation to Josef. The consequences of his situation still incredibly unclear, Josef goes to work but is pulled away by his supervisor who is more concerned with own obvious misconception that Josef has an improper relationship with his teenage cousin. Later, Josef goes to the opera and is abducted by the police and taken to a massive courtroom, where he tries to make his case that he’s innocent of any crimes and the system is corrupt, to cheers and jeers from the crowd. Just as it starts to feel like we’re getting somewhere, he’s once again ushered away again and brought to a small room where the two policeman from the beginning are about to be flogged. And are you confused enough yet?
As Welles suggested, The Trial is a waking nightmare. Not in the horror movie sense of “the worst possible thing ever happens over and over,” but in the out-of-control way dreams actually work. The closest comparison I can think of is Brazil, another surreal movie by a American director with more European sensibilities who really wanted to adapt Don Quixote. Both are about an innocent, regular, spineless guy getting absolutely railroaded by labyrinthine, absurd bureaucracy. That said, The Trial feels much closer to real-life anxieties, as you can just feel things are getting worse for Josef without ever really knowing what he’s doing wrong. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen at all. But why’s it happening to him? Just really, really bad luck, I guess.
Personally, I have actually had nightmares where I’ve been arrested or have been sentenced to prison without knowing what my crime was. They suck! It’s a really stressful way to spend your precious slumbering hours, the only silver lining being you get to wake up and start your day relieved things aren’t *that* fucked up. So while I can’t say for sure Kafka and Welles were tapping into a universal fear, it was definitely one I shared. And if this isn’t the sort of thing that freaks you out, you might at least enjoy some more incredibly strong black and white imagery from Welles and cinematographer Edmond Richard — this is a very pretty movie, especially the print on the restored 4K blu ray I got from Criterion. Also, it’s nice to see Anthony Perkins in something that isn’t Psycho! Having seen that movie really adds a fun layer to The Trial, since the whole time you’re thinking “he seems like an innocent man, but this Norman Bates motherfucker isn’t gonna fool me!”
Oh and also instead of end credits Orson Welles just reads the names of the cast over a still final frame. I guess to offer symmetry with the opening? It’s very unusual. Is this the only movie that’s ever done that?