Order in the court

>> The jury is back on Welles' new Trial

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

Orson Welles' adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial returns to theatres this month, restored and reworked into a posthumous director's cut. Since its 1963 release, the film has been subjected to public domain butchery, with many out of synch, pan-and-scan cuts rearing their ugly heads over the years. The discovery of the long-lost original negative led to the reparation of this beautifully shot, expressionist marvel, but the print, like the film itself, remains flawed.

The Trial's central character is the condemned Joseph K, brilliantly played here by Anthony Perkins, an innocent bank clerk accused and harassed by police, neighbours and legal men for a crime that he (and we) never quite figure out. The film follows K's desperate attempts to solve this mystery and somehow prove his innocence, leading him to cryptic, surreal encounters with all manner of sleazy characters, including a Jabba-the-Hut-like Welles as K's bed-ridden attorney. Jeanne Moreau and a distractingly mustachioed Romy Schneider also feature as K's fleeting love interests.

Shot with Welles' signature low angles, smooth dollies and noir-style shadow-and-mirror trickery, the barren industrial settings and impersonal offices (think Brazil) take on a claustrophobic, nightmarish quality perfect for the film's dream logic. K is a misunderstood man with no one to turn to, and whether he is being swarmed by pre-pubescent girls or wandering through a crowd of stock-still, sullen-faced old men, his isolation and frustration are clearly felt.

One scene that deftly captures this mood features K in a closet with two policemen who are being belt-whipped by a third man for misconduct that K inadvertently reported in court. Unable to defend the men, K escapes the closet (well before Perkins did, by the way), only to return to see them putting tape over their own mouths assuring him that it would muffle their screams.

What brings The Trial down is, quite simply, awkward pacing. Overlong, dialogue-heavy scenes fill the film's last third, and while you don't go to a Welles flick expecting loads of whammies (Hollywood code for explosions), some extra editing could have helped the flow. Unlike the bulk of Welles' films, which suffered from varying degrees of studio interference, The Trial stayed true to his artistic vision, so any flaws here are his own. In short, this isn't a Citizen Kane or Magnificent Ambersons, but it's still a fine piece of stylized, downbeat cinema well worth revisiting. :

From Aug. 11-17 at Cinéma du Parc