09.03.16 The Trial (Movie) Part 1
March 16, 2009
Why we’re doing this: We care about the notion of the Kafkaesque because it is a concept that helps us understand things in the world. Things like Guantanamo Bay and the failing economy seem to happen for no discernible reason, and by viewing them through the concept of the Kafkaesque we can more easily approach them.
Question of the day: True or false: Welles’s “The Trial’ is a faithful copy of the original.
In “The Trial,” it is apparent that the director is somehow mimicking or importing a sense of the Kafkaesque.
Things that stood out:
- the Bank (rows of desks, typewriters),
- K’s room (seemed small, oddly-proportioned, low ceiling, typical Welles format, attached to Ms. Burstner’s room, very organized),
- K finds papers quickly (rather than fumbling as in the book),
- hugging the walls as they move,
- detail that’s included although Kafka leaves so much out (especially detail that’s there before it comes to K’s attention, which is nonexistent in the book),
- huge grey apartment buildings (dirty, dark, Soviet, empty wasteland, huge and intimidating compared to claustrophobic indoors, inner & outer architecture don’t match, not of Kafka’s Trial, “Architecture gives an impression of how easily the individual can be destroyed.” (see Jordan Mohr’s blog))
K’s room seems a mirror of him: tidy, hyper-organized, bland, lacking personality
Josef is much more active in this than in the book. He asks more than once what he’s being charged with, he suggests getting a lawyer, he even threatens to file a formal complaint but drops it at the idea of being brought to “the station” (whereever that is…).
Anthony Perkins: the right actor? Seems not very authoritative, young, surprisingly tall & thin. He looks very American.
We get details in the movie that are just plain missing from Kafka’s work because the medium is a visual language. This is primarily because Kafka avoids giving too many visual cues. He deliberately works to use ambiguous words. Now in movie form there has to be a concrete set, so they have to come up with other ways to portray the same thing. The film is from the era when quick cuts still signified something, and we have to be aware of what’s being portrayed. The shot choices are also very significant.
Maybe this is like any movie of a book: something has to be left on the page, and something has to be brought into it. It’s kind of like translating the German to the English, because there are words and cultural markers that simply cannot be transferred. It’s just a translation, and it’s the best the translator knew how to do, but there are always differences. It is beneficial to compare them, but it is also beneficial to remain aware that they are totally different media with different goals.
The Bank in the movie is translated to The Office. Rather than a nice 19th century building with pretty offices with windows, it’s become a factory for white collar work. Welles is, perhaps, trying to relate it more clearly to 1960s America, to make something that’s recognizable to his audience and yet portrays them as cogs in the machine in order to jar them out of the way they live. Wide rooms with rows of desks, a sort of communal drabness that reminds people of the threat of communism and the Soviets. Women are always on typewriters, men always have phones and paper- some kind of social/ gender roles commentary. The sounds of typing and talking and ringing together come across like the hum in a beehive. (The movie is much more specific to the era in which it was produced than the novel.)
Links to “The Trial” on YouTube:
