Le procès [The Trial] (1962)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I generally enjoyed watching much of Le procès, but it’s clear that I’m not smart enough to understand this film. Coming from writer-director Orson Welles’s middle-years phase, it’s an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and it plays up the disorienting nature of the original text. As a man is accused of some unspecified offence, his attempts to understand the charges and defend himself are constantly rebuffed by an uncaring system that barely seems human. The story is not meant to be understood—it’s meant to be felt, and Welles gets to work in splendidly visual fashion, putting his characters in vast cavernous spaces, confronting them with early computers and nightmarish bureaucracy. From a purely cinematographic standpoint, there’s a lot to like here. The casting is also nothing short of amazing, in between names such as Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Michael Lonsdale and Orson Welles himself. Where the film intentionally falls apart is in making sense of it all. It’s not supposed to, and yet at times it feels like anything for anything’s sake. Many shots are arresting; some of the absurdity is funny; but eventually, Le procès hits a point where the whole thing feels too long and undercooked. Nonetheless, it clearly remains an Orson Welles film, and one where he really gets to work his magic.