The Trial dvd movie.|
The Trial buy bestselling dvd movies, videos find reviews, ratings, prices |
 |
List Price: $29.99 Our Price: $26.99 You Save: $3 Features • Black & White • DVD-Video • Letterboxed • Widescreen • NTSC In Theaters : 1963 DVD Release : 07 March, 2000 |
| [ + Zoom ] [ Buy Now ] | DVD : Usually ships in 24 hours |
|
The Trial description Orson Welles's 1962 take on Franz Kafka's nightmare comedy stars Anthony Perkins as a twitchy K, a man accused of a crime that is never specified. The story has been filmed several times over the years, but not quite with the air of noir fable Welles brings to it. Beginning with an unexpected prologue in which Welles, in voiceover, tells a haunting parable while we look at artwork by pioneer pinscreen animators Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff, The Trial is one surprising and visually startling chapter after another. The sense of an unrelieved, labyrinthine passage through an incoherent world--in which a very real but determinedly unclear guilt dogs poor K--is merciless but compelling to see, and resonates profoundly with Welles's obsession with the power and nature of illusion. A cast heavy on female icons from the '60s includes Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, and Romy Schneider. Welles favorite Akim Tamiroff is also on hand, and Welles himself plays the Advocate. --Tom Keogh |
|
|
| ♥♥♥♥♥ | Very acceptable DVD transfer of Welles' most neglected works |
| No doubt Welles enthusiasts will be compelled to purchase the Milestone edition of perhaps Kafka's greatest work adapted for the screen, but for the casual fan of Welles and those interested in Tony Perkins' early film work before he was so unfortunately typecast after Hitch's "Psycho," this film is a highly successful realization of the nighmarish world only Kafka could envision. About a man who is arrested, tried and eventually executed without even knowing his crime, Perkins is memorable as Josef K, the timid and confused clerk whose protestations against his accusers fall upon deaf ears (the scene in the giant courtroom with hundreds of extras packed in is most memorable).
With Welles in the rather minor role as the Advocate and featuring familiar castmates Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, and old favorite Akim Tamiroff ("Touch of Evil"), viewing this unsettling and disturbing vision is not only unique and moody, but an exercise in camera technique whereas Welles throws everything but the kitchen sink at the viewer to make Josef K's nightmare the audience's own through the use of elaborately staged sets--for example, Josef K's office with a sea of desks with his fellow worker drones and their typewriters clacking away, the Belle Epoque railway station in Paris, and other baroque yet abandoned buildings in what is today's Czech Republic. Welles' totalitarian state is painstakingly visualized with each scene as the film moves forward to its eventual conclusion and K's execution. With pinscreen animations narrated by Welles himself the parable of "The Law" becomes all too familiar and real to the situation faced by K in the remainder of the film. At the time this film was made, only a genius like Welles could pull this off and make the film believable and, at the same time, a work of cinematic art. While this DVD transfer is, by no means remarkable, it is for avid Welles fans and newcomers to his work, another opportunity to discover the gifts this director/actor gave to the art of film. |
|
|