Marking the centenary of the death of Franz Kafka the ACF London and Institut Francais present this special screening of Orson Well's adaptation of The Trial. While many writers have left their mark on cinema, Kafka has inspired countless films, not only adaptations but gave rise to a whole tradition referred to as Kafkaesque Cinema. This transnational cinematic tradition was rooted in Kafka's critique of modernity. Our film season presents a combination of film adaptations alongside the Kafkaesque genre.
A feverishly inspired take on Franz Kafka’s novel, Orson Welles’s The Trial casts Anthony Perkins as the bewildered office drone Josef K., whose arrest for an unspecified crime plunges him into a menacing bureaucratic labyrinth of guilt, corruption, and paranoia. Exiled from Hollywood and creatively unchained, Welles poured his ire at the studio system, the blacklist, and all forms of totalitarian oppression into this cinematic statement—a bold, personal film that he himself considered one of his greatest. Dizzying camera angles, expressionistic lighting, increasingly surreal locations—Welles unleashed the full force of his visual brilliance to convey the nightmarish disorientation of a world gone mad.
France, 1962, 119min, English, directed by Orson Wells.
