Endless desks

[ChristopherBanks]

In "The Apartment", Billy Wilder apes a set from King Vidor's "The Crowd" involving a sea of endless desks, full of 9-5 minions slaving away.

Two years later, Welles has a similar (albeit more surreal) scene in "The Trial".

Was Welles aware of "The Crowd"? And of "The Apartment"?

[LA]

I'm pretty certain he was aware of The Crowd , as he listed it's sequel Our Daily Bread in the "runners up" section of a top ten list (linked to here not long ago, if I remember rightly).

About The Apartment , I'd expect so, though I really don't know.

Haven't got TIOW to hand, did Welles like Wilder films?

[fantomas]

welles claimed to have seen THE CROWD when he was fifteen. he loved the films of king vidor.

[Le Chiffre]

THE CROWD is a good film. That shot towards the beginning where the camera swoops into the office building may have inspired the shot in Kane where the camera swoops down on Susan Alexander. I had the good fortune of seeing it with a live organ accompaniment, which really brings the old silent movies to life. Too bad it's not done more often. I think my favorite Vidor film is THE FOUNTAINHEAD, with a screenplay by Ayn Rand from her book. I've always wondered what Welles thought of this film (if he saw it), seeing as Rand lumped him and John Stienbeck together as Marxist propogandists.

Welles and Vidor must have been good friends since Welles wrote the screenplay for Ambersons aboard Vidor's yacht. He also did the narration for DUEL IN THE SUN, the giant Selznick production which Vidor is credited with directing (Von Sternberg is also said to have had a hand in it). Welles, Vidor, Von Sternberg - pretty impressive list of hired guns. Of course, after GWTW I'm sure Selznick was used to getting whatever and whoever he wanted.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Catch a 35mm print of THE TRIAL at the Makor / Steinhardt center tonight or over the next couple of days. Web:

http://www.92y.org/shop....MM5FS05

The first item is not a typo. I am giving a post-screening discussion (in a hurry, since the second showing of the movie is 17 minutes after the first), and they are charging an extra $6 to see me. (Although I probably won't get a taste, alas.)

[Jaime N. Christley]

The print is a restoration jobbie, and it's clearly been run through the machine a bunch of times. Mostly good, and then around the reel changes (or not) it starts to look like Attack of the Giant Gnats. Also the projectionist framed it to 1.85 - you could even see the overscan. Ugh.

But it was great, really great, to see a proper print, versus video. I don't agree with Jonathan Rosenbaum when he says "You haven't really seen it unless you've seen it on film" (I'd say that for Bresson, but not a Welles movie), but it's certainly a movie where you have to immerse yourself into the imagery to get the "full effect."

The talk was fun. I kept it short because they had another showtime scheduled close to mine. I talked about how and why Welles changed the ending of the story (the idea that Kafka's ending would have been inconceivable in a post-Auschwitz world got a few people shifting in their seats, but in a good way - I think it gave people something to think about), the way he used film form to create the world of the story, and the story itself, rather than making himself a slave to the text, and a few other minor observations.

Overall it was good stuff. I couldn't help wondering if the guy who ran the film program at Makor wasn't expecting someone a bit younger, but I think I did all right. And there was a pretty good turn-out (for a cultural center that's kinda out of the way and whose screening room isn't really a hot spot for NYC repertory moviegoing).

And man, I don't know if it was nostalgia or just a case of "film is better," but THE TRIAL really knocked me out this time, even moreso than previous viewings. I mean I actually had to take a second to compose myself before getting up to do my little talky thing. And everything that moved me was at the same time really bizarre (quite natural, with this movie). The two thugs passing the knife back and forth while K. looks on, emotionlessly, nearly wasted me, honest to god.

And did I mention this is one weird friggin' movie? I thought I had a handle on, maybe not the "plot" but at least the basic to and fro of the nightmare narrative. But a lot of things throw you for a loop, not the least of which is Welles' voice coming from odd sources (he dubbed at least a half dozen actors, although I don't know which Perkins lines he did - I think that OW may have been joking when he said he dubbed eleven of Perkins' lines).

Anyway, if you're in town, come by 35 W 67th Street, between Columbus and Central Park. Good stuff. See it again for the first time, and all that.

Best films of 1962 (kinda preferential order):

La Jetée (Chris Marker)
The Trial (Orson Welles)
Two Weeks in Another Town (Vincente Minnelli)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford)
Hatari! (Howard Hawks)
Mammals (Roman Polanski)
Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)
Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkvosky)
Hell Is for Heroes (Don Siegel)
Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (Robert Bresson)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (Sidney Lumet)
Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (Jean-Luc Godard)

[Jeff Wilson]

Your comments are interesting in light of Welles discussing (if we want to take him at face value) how he intended the film to be viewed as comedic in many ways. Clearly there is some of that in the film, but it doesn’t strike me as a hugely funny film, at least after the first half, once K’s case starts getting more serious. I suppose much of the humor works to set up the viewer for the end, and it’s quite potent in that regard. For a film in a similar vein, I liken it to Gilliam’s BRAZIL, which I find affects me in much the same way.

[Jaime N. Christley]

Comedy can be sad, frightening, and bewildering (as in BRAZIL), as well as simply funny. I think that's the territory Welles worked in w/THE TRIAL, and it's the kind of comedy that he did best as a filmmaker. (He never did "regular" ha-ha comedy very well, in my opinion.)

Were you there, Jeff? Because I don't believe I mentioned THE-TRIAL-as-comedy in the post, but I *did* mention it, very briefly, at the talk. And there was that young gent in the middle of the audience, looking very skeptical at what I was saying.

[Jeff Wilson]

Nope, I haven't left the confines of the greater Detroit area in several weeks. Whenever I think of THE TRIAL as comedy, I'm always reminded of Bogdanovich's description of he and Welles in Paris or wherever it was, laughing uproariously at a screening of the film, while the rest of the audience were trying to have a solemn experience with the great work of Art. It certainly isn't a ha-ha movie though. Thankfully, in this case.

[RayKelly]

From the Aug. 24, 2011 Blogdanovich by Peter Bogdanovich:

Toward the end of 1968, when I first met Orson Welles, he was so remarkably disarming that I had the nerve to tell him the one film of his I didn’t really like (at that time) was his 1962 adaptation of Franz Kafka’s famous, surrealistically inclined novel, THE TRIAL (available on DVD). And to please me (I would eventually find out), he pretended to agree, but within a year or so, he came closer to the truth: “It’s very personal for me…much closer to my own feelings about everything than any other picture…”

Right at the start, Welles spells out the mood of the film, which, he explains in his narration, has “the logic of a dream, a nightmare…” and, indeed, no other picture ever made has quite so pervasively or so hauntingly captured that terrifying feeling of unnamable horror. The leading character K (exceptionally played by Anthony Perkins soon after his Psycho success) is awakened at the beginning by two police detectives who proceed to ask him a series of insinuating questions, making him aware that he is not only suspected of some terrible, never-named crime, but also that he is feeling and acting inordinately guilty for a person professing innocence. Welles said he himself used to have recurring dreams of having murdered someone, waking in a sweat, wondering where it had happened.

Shot on real locations all over Europe——Prague, Munich, Paris——the film is as enthralling as it is unsettling, and was easily 40 years ahead of its time: The frightening sensation of dread it produces is far more in keeping with the dizzying, unbalanced 21st century than the early ‘60s before even the J.F.K. assassination. Welles smoothly plays the Advocate, a silky, slippery, God-like lawyer K goes to for help, and the picture’s evident distrust of the legal profession and of the easy corruptibility of the Law reminds one of Shakespeare’s famous line: “First, kill all the lawyers!”

Orson told me that he and Perkins, as well as the brilliant international supporting cast, which includes Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Akim Tamiroff, Madeleine Robinson and Suzanne Flon, had an often hilarious time shooting the movie, breaking up over the dank coldness of the inexorably ominous tale.

Read the full article at http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/archives/2011/08/24/the_trial/#

[Le Chiffre]

Welles said he himself used to have recurring dreams of having murdered someone, waking in a sweat, wondering where it had happened.

I've never heard that one before. That's pretty bizarre, in light of Mary Pacios' accusations of Welles having murdered The Black Dahlia.