The Trial (1962) ****

There's no mistaking that the 1962 film adaptation of Franz Kafka's posthumous 1925 novel The Trial is Orson Welles' version of The Trial. It's Kafkaesque, to be sure, but it's Wellesian Kafkaesque. I hadn't seen the film since I bought a cheap VHS copy of it in the mid 1990s, so seeing it in on 4K UHD was a revelation. I find the film a bit uneven and meandering at times, as is Welles' habit, but it's also an incredible technical achievement, with monumental production design, and some truly powerful scenes. A disorienting, surrealist bureaucratic nightmare that puts me in mind to revisit the classic book.

Orson Welles Feature Films Ranked