The session: "Bring Your Own Movie Month"
As in past years, we each take turns bring a movie and presenting it.
Week 4 (Ethan): The Trial (1962)
Directed by Ronald Neame
My Level of Prior Knowledge
I'd seen this once before, a year or two ago. So I was reasonably familiar with it.
Plot:
A mild-mannered bank clerk is arrested on charges that are never revealed to him (or to the audience), and finds himself trapped in a nightmarish and insane legal system.
Reaction and Other Folderol:.
The Trial is full of stunningly nightmarish imagery. At times it's intensely claustrophobic, while at other times it's expansive. It's dark and it's light. The dialogue is verbose and concise. The whole thing is an exercise in contradictions, and itkeeps the viewer on his heals, confused and discombobulated. I'd say that the protagonist, Josef K, is living a Kafka-esque nightmare, except that the movie is based on a Kafka novel. I'd say it's Orwellian, except that that seems trite given the Kafka connection. But it is dizzying, confusing and surreal.
The one problem with this film is director, Orson Welles himself. There are times that it drags, as Welle's couldn't seem to remove extraneous footage. I'm told that that was a thing with him -- that he was too enamored of his own dialogue that his films were too long. And this one could have been 15 minutes or a half hour shorter. Still, however, a really good intense film.
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