The Trial
By Charlotte Stace
La Filmoteca is screening Orson Welles’ masterpiece, The Trial (1962). Starring some of the great names of the 1960s - Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Suzanne Flon, Madeleine Robinson, Michel Lonsdale - it was written, directed and edited by Welles.
The film is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel by the same name (published posthumously in 1925). It presents the filmmakers superb talents: anthological sequence shots, expressionist angles and close-ups of enormous expressiveness. The film follows the character Josef K, who is caught in the judicial and bureaucratic system, from which he is unable to escape unscathed. Welles draws on nightmarish architecture and a disturbing descent into hell to explore the loss of identity, guilt and corruption of modern society.
Although it wasn’t immediately well-received by Welles’ critics, it has come to be known as one of his great cinematic masterpieces. The film will be shown in its original language with Spanish subtitles.