Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Why See This...The Trial [1962]


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.