The Trial (1962) on Netflix
NR19621h 59mDramaMysteryThriller
Men come into Josef K.'s room one morning and place him under arrest without naming the crime. He is not held, and he sets out to learn the charge.
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- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.6/1027,273 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes85%
Trailer
Plot summary
Josef K. is a departmental assistant manager at a large company and lives in a lodging house. One morning men come into his room and declare him under arrest, though no one says what crime he is accused of, and he is not held. Three of his coworkers are on hand to give evidence about the unstated offense. After they leave, Josef discusses the visit with his landlady, Mrs. Grubach, and his neighbor, Miss Bürstner. His uncle Max urges him to consult an advocate, Hastler.
Cast
- Max Buchsbaumas Examining Magistrate
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Trial (1962)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Welles dubbed the dialogue of 11 actors in the film, including a few lines for star Anthony Perkins, then challenged Perkins to spot them; Perkins could not find the lines Welles had dubbed.
- When producer Alexander Salkind had trouble collecting the promised capital for studio interiors, Welles shot The Trial's interiors in the Gare d'Orsay, an abandoned Parisian railway station, and rearranged his set design to suit it.
- On the eve of the film's Paris premiere, Welles cut a sequence he called ten minutes long, actually about six, in which Josef K. meets a computer scientist played by Greek actress Katina Paxinou who predicts his fate.
- To create Josef K.'s workplace, Welles built a set in an exposition hall just outside Zagreb, where 850 secretaries banged typewriters at 850 office desks.
- Welles hoped to cast American comic actor Jackie Gleason as the Advocate Hastler, but took the part himself when Gleason rejected it.
- Welles edited The Trial in Paris while technically on vacation, commuting in at weekends from Málaga, Spain, where he was shooting prologue and epilogue sequences for his self-financed Don Quixote.
- Welles could not film in Kafka's home city of Prague because Czechoslovakia's communist government regarded his work as decadent.
- For the opening fable about a man kept from the Law by a guard, Welles used pin screen animation by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, who made animated prints with thousands of pins.
