It's always a question whether film form should attempt to reproduce literature. Is the film the author's, the director's, or both? With Orson Welles, the question is easily answered. We have Tony Perkins raging against the darkness--walking the dream landscape of a nightmare--spitting in the eye of the law--a victim yet not a victim. He is an existential juggernaut. Unlike the man who waits at the door, he already knows it's his door (he says he knows the story). He knows the door will close, but what happens on his side will be his choice. This is a strange curve to throw, a character devoid of dramatic irony, like Oedipus knowing the Oedipus story. Then there's the asexuality and monomania, the refusal of dissuasion which allows Perkins to "win." Force doesn't affect him. When he is dragged off, we aren't really sure who is doing the dragging. In the book, we know perfectly well. I wonder how Orson Welles would have handled such an arrest.

Orson Welles' film version of Kafka's "The Trial" is a perfectly fine 'visualization' of the book but it still doesn't work. Perhaps this was one book that should never have been filmed, not even by Welles, unless perhaps in animated form. Kafka's world, particularly the one in which Josef K finds himself, exists more in the reader's imagination rather than in any real tangible place and it's filled with characters who are never flesh-and-blood. The problem any film version has to overcome is how to translate than imaginary world and these characters into something that, at least, seems real and into something 'recognizable'. Welles doesn't do that; rather he transfers Kafka's text onto a series of Wellsian images and does it rather badly. It looks great, of course (DoP Edmond Richard) but the acting is very uneven, (it's another of Welles' 'international' projects with an international cast). Anthony Perkins makes Josef K a very fussy prima donna with whom we can have no sympathy; consequently his nightmare predicament never seems more than just a bad dream and the sooner he wakes from it the better for him and for us. Even Welles himself, playing the Advocate, can't lift the film while the dubbing of most of the cast and the post-synchronization is very poor.

The easiest thing to do when writing a review for a movie like this, I guess, is to lie... Lie about how I was mesmerized by the intelligence of the screenplay, lie about how a such a film stimulates all my senses simultaneously, and lie about how it was - hands down - one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my entire life. The honest truth, however, is that watching "The Trial" meant surviving the most frustrating and infuriating two hours of my life! I hate when a film makes me feel dumb, and "The Trial" made me feel utterly stupid! I'm not the world's biggest intellectual, but I don't consider myself dumb, neither, and certainly not when it comes to film. There were reasons enough for me to watch "The Trial". I'm a giant admirer of German expressionist cinema, to which the film brings tribute. I have a weakness for several people in the cast, including Anthony Perkins (who did so much more in his career than star in "Psycho") and Romy Schneider (who truly was one of the most versatile actresses in contemporary Europe). Most of all, I have tremendous and endless respect for Orson Welles, who directed and/or starred in many of the most influential and original movies in history. I actually can't write anything negative about the film itself. The performances are impeccable, the direction is tight, and the sets & scenery are often stunning. What I most definitely can say, though, is that the oeuvre of the notorious Franz Kafka isn't for me... You can state that it's abstract, intellectually challenging and surreal, but for 99% of this planet's population, it's just impossible, implausible and incomprehensible nonsense.