The Trial on DVD

[jaime marzol]

http://www.milestonefilms.com/pdf_press/Trial.pdf

The Restoration of The Trial

For over thirty years the only known negative for Orson Welles’ The Trial was lost.
During that time the film fell into the public domain and many different versions were
released both in film and video. However, all these were splicy, dirty, missing crucial scenes,
lacking in contrast, lacking in sound quality, and, perhaps worst of all, were panned-andscanned
versions of the film’s original 1:1.66 film ratio. It was like looking at the Grand
Canyon through a broken, dirty, small, square window. The film fell out of favor largely
because Welles’ magnificent mise-en-scene and sound design were lost in the murky
depths of the bad prints and videos.

In 1995, film historian and copyright expert David Pierce was working on the recovery of
the missing elements for the 1928 version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. During that search, he
discovered a pile of film cans in a closet in a midtown New York office building and
immediately recognized that among the material was the long-lost negative for The Trial.
Pierce and Milestone Film went to John Allen to inspect the materials at his premiere
restoration lab in Pennsylvania, Cinema Arts. There, Allen discovered that the negative had
been cut for television distribution and that a different opening sequence had been attached.
Fortunately, another can of negative was found that contained all the missing sequences as
well as the original trailer.

It was left to David Pierce and Cary Roan of the Roan Group to piece together the precious
elements. In 1998, at CinePost in Atlanta (the only lab in the country with a wet-gate filmto-tape
transfer system), they created a new magnificent looking (and sounding) 1:1. 66
letterboxed video master. This new edition is that first video ever available to the public that
fully reflects the film as it was originally intended to be seen.

Synopsis

Joseph K, a young bank clerk, is awakened one morning by a police inspector and
two detectives. They have come to arrest him. Although he has committed no crime and has
no idea of the charges, he finds himself being discussed and scorned by his neighbors, all
of whom seem to know the details of his case. K is led through a labyrinth of corridors and
taken before an examining magistrate, but he still cannot find out why he is under suspicion.
His uncle, who somehow knows about his forthcoming trial, takes him to a bedridden
advocate, Hastler, who agrees to act as his defense attorney. While the advocate rambles on
about legal problems, K is seduced by Leni, the advocate’s nurse and mistress, who is
irresistibly drawn to condemned men. After dismissing the advocate because of his delay in
getting on with the case, K meets a priest who tells him an allegorical tale of a man who
waited all his life at the door of The Law but died without gaining admittance. Then, early
one morning, K is accosted by two executioners who lead him to a quarry at the edge of
town. They want K to take his own life but he refuses. When he defiantly maintains his
innocence and laughs hysterically at his tormentors, they toss two sticks of dynamite into
the pit. Following an explosion, a mushroom shaped cloud rises from the quarry.

Orson Welles Interview, from BBC Monitor, 1962.

BBC: Your film The Trial is, of course based upon Franz Kafka’s stunning novel.

Orson Welles: Well yes, I suppose that you could say that although you wouldn’t
necessarily be correct. I’ve generally tried to be faithful to Kafka’s novel in my film, but
there are a couple of major points in my film that don’t correspond when reading the novel.
First of all the character of K, [Anthony Perkins] in the film, doesn’t really deteriorate,
certainly doesn’t surrender at the end.

He certainly does in the book, he’s murdered in the book

Yes, he is murdered in the end; he’s murdered in our film, but because I fear that K may be
taken to be a sort of Everyman by the audience; I have been bold enough to change the end
to the extent that he doesn’t surrender. He is murdered, as anyone is murdered when
they’re executed, but where in the book he screams “Like a dog, like a dog you’re killing
me!” In my version he laughs in their faces because they’re unable to kill him.

That’s a big change

Not so big, because in fact, in Kafka they are unable to kill K. When the two out-of-work
tenors are sent away to a field to murder K, they can’t really do it; they keep passing the
knife back and forth to one another. K refuses to collaborate in his own death in the novel,
it’s left like that and he dies with a sort of whimper, now in the film, I’ve simply replaced
that whimper with a bang.

Do you have any compunction about changing a masterpiece?

Not at all, because film is quite a different medium. Film should not be a fully illustrated,
all-talking, all-moving version of a printed work, but should be itself, a thing of itself. And in
that way it uses a novel in the same way that a playwright might use a novel as a jumping off
point from which he will create a completely new work. So no, I have no compunction. If
you take a serious view of filmmaking, you have to consider that films are not an illustration
or an interpretation of a work, but quite as worth while as the original.

So it’s not a film of the book, it’s a film based on the book?

Not even based, it’s a film inspired by the book, in which my collaborator and partner is
Kafka. That may sound like a pompous thing to say, but I’m afraid that it does remain a
Welles film and although I have tried to be faithful to what I take to be the spirit of Kafka,
the novel was written in early ‘20s and this is now 1962 and we’ve made the film in 1962
and I’ve tried to make it my film because I think that it will have more validity if it’s mine.

There have been many different readings of The Trial, many people say that it’s an
allegory of “the individual against authority” others say that it is symbolic of “man
fighting against implacable evil” and so on. Have you gone along with any such
interpretations in your film?

I think that a film ought to be, or a good film ought to be as capable of as many
interpretations as a good book and I think that it is for the creative artist to hold his tongue
on that sort of question, so you’ll forgive me if I refuse to reply to you. I’d rather that you
go and see the film, which should speak for itself and must speak for itself. I’d prefer that
you make your own interpretation of what you think!

I wasn’t surprised when I heard that you were making The Trial, because it seems that the
process of investing ordinary events, with intonations and overtones is very much part of
your armory as a filmmaker. Do you think that Welles and Kafka go well together in this
respect?

Well it’s funny that you should say that because, I was surprised when I heard that I was
making The Trial, in fact what surprised me was that it was done at all. It’s a very expensive
film, it’s a big film, certainly five years ago there is nobody who could have made it; nobody
who could have persuaded distributors or backers or anybody else. But the globe has
changed recently; there is a new moment in filmmaking and I don’t mean by that, that we’re
better filmmakers, but that the distribution system has broken down a little and the public is
more open, more ready for difficult subjects. So what’s remarkable is that The Trial is
made by anybody! It’s such an avant-garde sort of thing.

What would The Trial have been like if it had been made say five years ago?

Well I don’t think it would have been made five years ago, but if it had, it would only have
gone to the art theatres and would have been made as a slender, difficult, experimental sort
of film, instead of being made as this is with Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy
Schneider, you know big-star cast, big picture! Imagine what that means, imagine what it
means for me to have had the chance to make it, indeed to have had the chance to work. This
is the first job that I’ve got as a director in four years!

Of course, the fact is you’re in love with the movies aren’t you?

That’s my trouble! See, if I’d only stayed in the theatre, I could have worked steadily and
without stopping for all these years. But, having made one film, I decided that it was the best
and most beautiful form that I knew and one that I wanted to continue with. I was in love
with it as you say, really tremendously so.

Is it significant that films such as The Trial can now be produced on large budgets, for
commercial cinema audiences?

Oh it’s wonderful, and it’s very hopeful. I mean there are all sorts of difficult subjects being
made into mainstream pictures nowadays and they are doing well, people are going to see
them. Hiroshima Mon Amour or Marienbad, I mean I don’t like them, but I’m so glad that
they were made. It doesn’t matter that I don’t like them; Resnais would probably hate The
Trial, but what matters is that a difficult and, on the face of it, experimental film, got made
and is being shown and is competing commercially! In other words what is dying is the
purely commercial film, at least that is the great hope!

How do you react to the question of the audience in film?

Ah, that’s an interesting thing. It seems to me that the great gift of the film form, to the
director, is that we are not forced to think of the audience, in fact it is impossible to think of
our audience. If I write a play, I must inevitably be thinking in terms of “Broadway” and
“The West End,” “The Boulevards of Paris” or the “Comedie Française”, in other words
I must visualize the audience that will come in; its social class, its prejudices and so on. But
with a film, we never think of the public at all, we simply make the film, the same way you
sit down and write a book, and then hope that they like it. I have no idea what the public will
make of The Trial. Imagine the freedom of that! I just make The Trial and then we’ll see
what they think of it. The Trial is made for no public, for every public, not for this year, for
as long as the film may happen to be shown. That is the gift of gifts!

How do you feel about the film itself? Have you pulled it off?

Well you know, this morning when I arrived on the train, I ran into Peter Ustinov and his
new film, Billy Budd had just opened and I said, how do you feel about your film, do you
like it? And he said “I don’t like it, I’m proud of it! And I wish that I had his assurance and
his reason for assurance, for I’m sure that is the right spirit in which to reply. What I do
feel is an immense gratitude for the opportunity and I can tell you that during the making of
it, not now with the cutting, because that’s a terrible chore, but with the actual shooting, was
the happiest period of my entire life.

Background:
While in Europe after the failure of Touch of Evil, Welles was approached by the
producing team of Alexander and Michael Salkind to direct a film. The fact that they had a
list of literary works in public domain should have cued him to their financial state. From
this list he decided on Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba, but that story was being filmed with
Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis. From what remained, he chose Kafka’s novel, though he
personally liked The Castle better. Funds were raised and Welles set out to design the sets,
which were supposed to slowly fade away through the course of the story, as if reality was
being melting away, until nothing remained. However, as was about to begin, it was
announced that (are you ready?) there wouldn’t be enough money to fulfill his original
plan. Welles circumvented this dilemma by shooting in various locations through the
continent, from Zagreb to Rome to Paris, where the Gare d’Orsay (an abandoned train
station, now renovated and known as the Musee d’Orsay) was used for several interior
shots, including the law offices.

Orson Welles on the Making of The Trial
from This is Orson Welles by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich. Jonathan
Rosenbaum, Editor.

The Trial began as Taras Bulba. I did a one-day job for Abel Gance in Austerlitz,
which was produced by a couple of Russians named Salkind — father and son. And they
came to me a couple of years later and said they wanted me to act in Taras Bulba. Now, at
that same time, an American company was about to shoot a Taras Bulba with Yul Brynner
and Tony Curtis, and I said, “Well, we’re going to have trouble fighting that big, expensive
American picture.” They said, “We’re willing to go ahead.” So I said, “I’ll only do it if
you let me direct it and write it.” They said all right. So I wrote the script and went to see
them and they said, “Well we decided you’re right.” So I was stuck with the script of
Taras Bulba, but now I had what’s called “a relationship” with them. And the old man,
who made Garbo’s first picture out of Sweden — an angelic, dear man — gave me a list of
about a hundred books, saying which one did I want to make? They had Kafka’s The Trial
on the list, and I said I wanted to do The Castle because I liked it better, but they persuaded
me to do The Trial. I had to do a book — couldn’t make them do an original.

They thought The Trial was public domain, and then they had to pay for it, but that’s
another story. When they had these conversations with me — they later told me — they had
to borrow money in order to drive up to the Eagles, in the Austrian Alps, where I was. They
not only didn’t have the money for the picture, they didn’t even have the money to come
talk about the picture. But that’s what makes those kind of people great, and you have to
love them, because they’ve made hundreds of pictures without any money. And here they
were, willing to go ahead with me when nobody was, and I was most grateful to them from
the beginning of the picture to final cut. There was only one thing: I had to use their
composer, and I argued about that for months until I finally realized he was one of the
principal backers.

I spent months designing the sets for all the interiors. We were only going to shoot the
actual big office and the streets of Prague and Zagreb for the last walk with the murderers.
And during the time we were in Zagreb, my sets were to be built in the studios. The art
director who was to realize my designs had made all the blueprints, everything was ready to
go, and, the night before we were to leave for Yugoslavia, Mr. Salkind the elder came up to
me and said there was no money to build any sets of any kind.

Now, that was the main body of the picture — totally designed for a special visual effect by
myself, square inch by square inch. What to do? I was living here, at the Hotel Meurice — it
was late at night — wandering around in the sitting room, trying to figure out how to shoot
without sets, this story in particular. And the moon is a very important thing for me, and I
looked out the window and saw two full moons. And then realized that they were the two
clock faces of the Gare d’Orsay glowing in the night, and it was really a sign. And from
four in the morning until dawn, I wandered around the deserted old railway station and
found everything I needed for the picture.

I discovered the world of Kafka: the offices of the Advocate, the law court offices, the
corridors — a kind of Jules Verne modernism, which seems to me quite in the taste of
Kafka. The thing that gave it a particular force is that it’s not only a very large place to work
in, and a very beautiful place to photograph, but that it’s full of sorrow — the kind of
sorrow that accumulates in a railway station where people wait … I know this sounds
terribly mystical, but really a railway station is a haunted place. And the story is all about
people waiting, waiting, waiting for their papers to be filled. It is full of the hopelessness of
the struggle against bureaucracy. Waiting for a paper to be filled is like waiting for a train,
and it’s also a place (of) refugees. People were sent to Nazi prisons from there.

The Reception of The Trial

Orson Welles’ The Trial is an extraordinary, highly individualistic piece of motion
picture craftsmanship. The novel on which it is based has been a source of intense
argument, interpretation, and researches into meanings with meanings — a parable, an
allegory, a psychoanalytic excursion into the mind of man, a biting comment on the
authoritarian state — you name it. And the film continued the debate with critics divided for
and against. Many negative reviews that the films received weren’t really critiquing the film
itself, but instead reviewing Welles himself. Most of the same techniques that made Welles
respected in the first place were now used against him.

The Trial adds up to what Welles no doubt envisioned when he undertook to translate it
into cinematic terms, is something else again. You find yourself astonished at what is taking
place in front of you, there is no time to try to find out why. You lose sight of what is being
said in the open-mouthed wonder at the manner of saying it. The result is that you maybe
shaking your head in disbelief, muttering, “I never saw anything like that in my life. . . But
what was it all about, anyway?” Maybe, in the end, that is just the effect intended in the first
place?

If, as some critics have suggested, Welles has not faithfully adapted Kafka’s book, he has
certainly been faithful to the author’s intentions. Kafka describes extraordinary events in a
matter-of-fact style; Welles depicts many ordinary occurrences in an elaborate,
expressionistic style. The result, however is the same: terrifying vision of the modern world
conveyed with the logic of a nightmare.

The Trial it is felt, did not have the success it merited during its first release in 1963.
Appraisers felt it was ahead of its time as Citizen Kane was and should now find its way
into film history.

Milestone Film & Video

Milestone was started in 1990 by Amy Heller and Dennis Doros to bring out the
best films of yesterday and today. The company’s new releases have included Takeshi
Kitano’s Fireworks, Bae Yong-kyun’s Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, Luc
Besson’s Atlantis, the documentaries of Philip Haas, and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi.
Milestone’s re-releases have included restored versions of Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and
his Brothers, F. W. Murnau’s Tabu and The Last Laugh, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B.
Schoedsack’s Grass and Chang, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Hiroshi
Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudi and Woman in the Dunes, and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Life of
Oharu. Milestone will also be releasing the films of silent screen legend Mary Pickford,
Curtis Harrington’s Night Tide and Roland West’s 1930 wide-screen film, The Bat
Whispers.

Milestone is also known for rediscovering, acquiring, restoring and distributing unknown
“classics” that have never been available in the US. These include Pier Paolo Pasolini’s
Mamma Roma, Alfred Hitchcock’s “lost” propaganda films, Bon Voyage and Aventure
Malgache, Early Russian Cinema (a series of twenty-eight films from Czarist Russia),
Mikhail Kalatozov’s astonishing I am Cuba and Jane Campion’s Two Friends. In 1998,
Milestone will also release the “lost” films of Kevin Brownlow — It Happened Here and
Winstanley.

Milestone received a Special Archival Award from the National Society of Film Critics in
1996 for its restoration and release of I am Cuba. Video Magazine gave a ViVA Gold
award for the company’s video release of the “Age of Exploration” series, naming it one o
f the top-ten releases of 1992. Five of Milestone’s restored titles (Grass, Tabu, Mary
Pickford’s Poor Little Rich Girl, Clarence Brown and Maurice Tourneur’s The Last of the
Mohicans and Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur) are listed on the Library of
Congress’s National Film Registry.

[SFT]

Are we sure that the french DVD of The Trial has the original english mono soundtrack? Amazon.fr. only lists a french mono track.

SFT

[SFT]

...and is the documentary in english?

[Jeff Wilson]

Yes, the movie (both versions) has the English soundtrack, and no, the documentary is not in English. The documentary is primarily a talking heads kind of piece, so it's not worth getting solely for the documentary if you don't speak French. No subtitles of any kind.

[SFT]

And, this wouldn't be one of those dvds where french subtitles appear when you chose the original english sound track?

SFT

[Jeff Wilson]

The audio menu says English with French subtitles, but I found that by selecting the French soundtrack and beginning the film, I could then switch to the English track without subtitles coming on. This might be player-specific, or not. I haven't been able to try it on multiple players.

[SFT]

Thanks for the info Jeff. But here is the new problem: For some reason amazon.fr. refuses to accept my credit card! I have no idea why, but I need to find another on-line shop to buy the DVD. None of my usual sources can help me. Do you, or anyone else here, know a good place to buy region 2 french DVDs?

SFT

[Jeff Wilson]

Others here may have places they've tried, but I've never had a problem with Amazon France, consequently I haven't ordered anywhere else. You can check the French etailers listed at the following thread from DVD Talk's international forum:
International DVD Buying Info



Edited By Jeff Wilson on Aug. 22 2003 at 10:10

[SFT]

Well, that's certainly a bit strange...Amazon.fr wouldn't accept my credit card, but they WOULD accept an expired one. I was then able to switch payment options when the order was made. Hmmmm....

But thanks for info! That link will be helpful once I start tracking down a place to buy the Spanish Chimes at Midnight DVD.

SFT

[Cole]

I finally got to see the French DVD of The Trial. I’d already seen the Milestone DVD of the film a few times, and it’s decent enough, but the French DVD blows it out of the water. It would seem that the print they used to make the French DVD was close to pristine condition. Overall, the quality of this DVD equals or surpasses the best DVD’s I’ve seen for older black and white movies. If you like The Trial, and you have a DVD player that can play Region 2 / PAL DVD’s, you’ll definitely want to pick this one up.

There is no pre-set option to watch the film in English without French subtitles, so to do that, as Jeff indicates above, you have to start the film in French then switch the audio to English. I spent several minutes trying to turn off the French subtitles and found that impossible to do, then I looked up this old thread to find out how Jeff removed them. Starting the movie in French then switching the audio to English worked just fine. Now if I only had a nice widescreen HDTV to watch it on….

[blunted by community]

does this new trial have the scene of joseph k crossing that strange death camp of the accused during the day?

there is a tiny snippet of it in the desilu trailer but that is the only place i have seen it.

and cole, why do you have glenn ander's avatar?

[Cole]

The French DVD, by Studio Canal, actually comes with two discs. It has a second disc with a version of the film that was assembled in 1984 which I haven’t watched. I know nothing about the 1984 version, but if there’s footage of prisoners in the day time under the statue draped with a cloth, it’s on that disc. The first disc has some footage that was excised from the movie but it shows Joseph K in his office.

As to my avatar, I've had it for a long time now. I think the better question is why does "Glenn Anders" use my avatar's name?

[blunted by community]

oh my god, clarify this: the whole scene with k crossing the camp during the day? not the snippet from the trailer, but the whole scene is on this new dvd?

oh my. i hope you meant the whole scene is there.

[colwood]

I haven't watched the Desilu version in its entirety, but I just did give it a thorough skim and I'm sorry to say, the scene of K in the camp during the day is not in this version, the whole scene or the snippet.

I'd love to see that scene in the film. I'd also like to see the brief headshot of K from the trailer when he says "who accuses me" in the first scene instead of the group shot they use in the film.

(On a side note I did notice something odd. The Desilu version completely omits the brief scene of K going through the camp at night on his way to the court, and it also moves the scene of K walking with Irmie to before his meeting with the court guard.)

[blunted by community]

ah, too bad, we'll never get to see that day time camp footage.

the desilu version also clips some of the breakfast dialog with mrs burstner, no camp scene, and i think it has different
editing of the existential threesome with k, bloch, and the advocate's centerfold nurse..

if you can find the desilu trailer, the snippet of the camp during the day is there.