The Trial

Orson Welles - 1962
Architecturally, this is among the most impressive films I have seen. The settings are almost abstracted, no signposts or even distinguishing marks, just rows and rows of windows and modernist stone. The way the camera distorts straight lines is used, as are slightly canted angles, to avoid neat horizontals; they rather seem to push out, monumental but false. The strange thing is how these terrible buildings are always deceptively spacious, offering 'corridors' behind that seem to strech unto infinity, with no street furniture, just flat space.
And they all seem to be lit arttificially, even outside, which is impossible. Harsh lights are often here, Mr K. often against a white screen or white wall (no adornment). Even the furnished advocat's room seems oddly abstract, the books full of dust, likely.
The speech is quick and, on this watch at least I found it, meaningless. Welles is quite faithful to Kafka, looking to repeat his 'little' problems, oddly childish women and assistants who laugh but are deadly serious. It is quite existentialist, which is a rather than the reading of Kafka.