To read Franz Kafka one must imagine a world where
logic and reason have no hold. To see such a place envisioned by one of cinema's greatest auteurs is a rare treat. Orson Welles’ 1962 adaptation of The Trial is by no means a
conventional edge of your seat thriller. Looming beneath the shadows of his classics Citizen Kane and
Touch of Evil, Welles’ The Trial is an underappreciated masterpiece of
avant-garde cinema and surrealist art. Some call it hyper-stylized, over-the-top,
nonsensical and entirely unwatchable. From the latter perspective, it is all
these things, yes, outside of being unwatchable. But with The Trial, Welles has created an
audacious film that demands to be remembered; something truly unlike any film that has come before or after it.
