The Trial

No reminder is needed about the fact that Orson Welles was a remarkable man. A creative mind with a startling gift for originality and innovation, Welles is best remembered by most people for his infamous War Of The Worlds radio broadcast (which caused mass panic as people believed they were listening to a live news report of an alien attack!) - and, of course, his motion picture directorial debut at the age of 25, a film named Citizen Kane that’s considered by many people to be the greatest movie of all time.

Welles didn’t think Kane was his best work, though. As far as the man himself was concerned, that honour went to a movie he made 21 years later on a restrictive budget in Europe. Produced by Alexander Salkind (who’d go on to become rather rich with Superman), The Trial was Welles’ own unique interpretation of Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel of the same name. But Welles not only re-ordered the book’s chapters, he also put his own personal spin on the story.

It’s a rather confusing film, and that’s intentional. From the moment that Josef K (Anthony Perkins) is woken up in his apartment by nameless men who charge him with a crime but won’t say what it is, the film runs on the logic of a nightmare, with K’s initial confusion and outrage turning out to be something more as the film progresses and he faces the courts, lawyers, a disturbed painter - and various women, all of who he is almost casually intimate with but, it seems, also terrified of. The crime itself, if there ever was one, ceases to be an issue somewhere along the way.

Kafka had a lot to say in his book about the way the process of law works (or doesn’t), and Welles has a lot to say himself on top of that. Rife with double meanings and unspoken agendas - but, according to Welles, no symbolism - it’s like watching an early David Lynch film with a political subtext. The visuals that Welles uses as an intricate part of his storytelling are mind-boggling - this film, completed exactly 40 years ago at the time of writing this review, is done with a visual language that’s only now become part of mainstream culture. Crane shots and long, complex dolly and tracking shots abound, and the latter were done without the aid of modern conveniences like Steadicam. As always, Welles lights his film as much for what you don’t see as what you do, he uses sound as a vital tool in the storytelling, and the frantic editing is incredibly bold for its time (remember, this was 1962) and is often as visceral as a modern music video.

You’ll want to watch The Trial a few times to get the most out of it; like the best cinema, there are many layers, details and ideas here that make repeated viewings a very rewarding experience.

For a long time it’s been notoriously hard to see The Trial with any kind of clarity or quality, and the film was long overdue for a restoration job. It’s gotten it, though not to the Lawrence Of Arabia degree, obviously.

The film was originally shot at 1.66:1 and is presented here in a slightly narrower aspect ratio than that, resulting in small but visible black space at the top and bottom of the frame. Not surprisingly, it’s not 16:9 enhanced.

The running time of this version is a bit of a giveaway; this is almost certainly an NTSC-PAL conversion from the same master used for the US DVD issued by Milestone Films. As it’s a black and white film, colour fidelity obviously isn’t a problem, though there are a few incidences of unwanted “colouration� in isolated shots - a kind of “moire� effect in colour on top of the monochrome picture.

Taking source material limitations into account it’s a terrific transfer, though. The film’s original opening sequence, essential to the movie’s structure and key to the ending, was removed from prints for years. Here it has been restored from a 16mm print; the remainder comes from 35mm and looks a lot cleaner, but in case you were wondering about the scratches and sudden image-quality change early on, that’s why. Reel change marks appear in a couple of different formats, implying that the source material for this new print may have been culled from more than one place.

Despite the length of the film and the fact that this is a single layered DVD, no problems appear at the video compression end of things.

Orson Welles reportedly re-dubbed all the audio for this film after shooting had completed, cheerfully changing the script slightly as he went and doing eleven of the voices himself (including some of Anthony Perkins’ lines) and as a result there are a lot of lip-sync issues throughout this film. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it looks, at times, like it was a re-dubbed foreign-language film; despite the IMDB’s listing of The Trial under its French title (because it premiered in France), it was in fact made entirely in English.

The audio is, of course, in mono, though it’s encoded as a Dolby Digital 2.0 track on the DVD. Fidelity is limited by the technology of the time and the source material, which appears to have been an optical print soundtrack. But it’s clear and clean, and aside from some distortion and a slight “pumping� of background hiss if you listen really closely, this is the best this soundtrack has sounded in a long, long time. The dialogue is of great importance throughout, and it’s terrific not to once have to go back and try and make out a line or a word from a muffled soundtrack.

Fans of Albinoni’s Adagio in C will be very pleased to hear it played often throughout (it was less of a cliche in 1962) - both forwards and backwards.

Authored by Madman Interactive, the disc contains very stylish static menu screens, along with the usual DVD Text and encoded jacket picture for players that support those features (like Sony’s). The limited extras on the disc are the same as those on the US version, minus the trailer.

TV Opening: Ah, those wacky Americans. Not content with lopping the intro that sets the film up from their prints, the folks at Desilu (yes, Desi Arnaz Jr and Lucille Ball!) had a new opening to the film put together to help explain to the viewers what was about to take place. It does this by revealing everything that’s about to happen, right up to the end, but never quite manages to explain any of it in terms a couch potato would understand. Needless to say, if you haven’t seen the film before, watch this afterwards!

Compulsion Trailer: A trailer for the terrific 1959 movie Compulsion, which starred Orson Welles but wasn’t directed by him. Typical ‘50s trailer exaggeration, at an aspect ratio that chops the sides off the movie’s CinemaScope photography!

Cast Profiles: IMDB profiles for Welles, Perkins and the wonderful Jeanne Moreau, who gets the most pages of ‘em all.

Franz Kafka Bio: A quick Kafka primer; five text pages.

Madman Propaganda: Trailers for Innocence, Walkabout and