Author: Huw Wheldon
Translator: Tan Tian
Proofreading: Yi Ersan
Source: www.wellesnet.com (1962)
An alienated world. In the eyes of readers, the story not only creates a sense of despair in the face of the bureaucracy, but also seems to be a kind of anticipation of Nazi atrocities in the 20th century. Director Orson Welles made the movie The Trial in 1962 based on the novel. At that time, the Hollywood studio system was gradually disintegrating, and the tastes of middle-class audiences had quietly changed. The American film rating system was about to replace the Hayes Code, and post-war European films had also formed an aesthetic trend. Wells was finally able to direct again after finishing " " (1958). For Orson Welles, the director's first work that was a sensation in Hollywood, who was well versed in Hollywood's control over directors, encountered the "red storm" in Hollywood, went into exile in Europe, and was only praised by film critics of the "Cinema Manual". The Trial is an invaluable opportunity.
This year coincides with the 60th anniversary of The Trial, more than half a century ago when Hugh Welton, then BBC executive, interviewed Orson Welles about the film's imminent release.
Q: Is your latest film The Trial an adaptation of Kafka's novel?
Orson Welles: Yeah, I guess you could say that, though not exactly. In general, I tried to keep the work faithful to Kafka's novel, but in my film, I adapted several points from the novel. First off, Joseph K's character in the movie doesn't really deteriorate, and certainly doesn't surrender at the end.
The Trial
Q: In the original novel, K was secretly executed.
Orson Welles: Yes, he was murdered at the end - in the movie as well, but I boldly changed the ending because I feared that K might be seen by the audience as a normal guy worth nothing , that he did not surrender to everything. He was murdered and looked like the others when they were executed, but in the novel people say that the dead K was "like a dog!" In my adaptation, K laughed at their faces , because they could not kill him.
Q: This is a big change.
Orson Welles: Not that big either, because in fact in Kafka's narrative they couldn't kill K either. At the end, when the last two are sent out into the wild to murder K, they can't get their hands on it and keep passing knives around. K in the novel finally tried to survive, but he died just like that, and died with a whimper. Now in the movie, I just replace that whimper with a bang.
Q: Have you ever thought about ending the film with two executioners stabbing K?
Orson Welles: No, to me, the ending to Stab K is kind of like a ballet written by a Jewish intellectual before Hitler came along. If Kafka lived in the Nazi era, I'm sure he wouldn't have the heart to write such an ending after the tragic massacre of six million Jews . KraftIn "The Trial," Ka shows his anticipation of Nazi atrocities. I'm not saying my ending was particularly good, but it was the only way I could think of to end the film. I have to hasten K's death.
Q: Did you have any concerns about adapting such an acknowledged masterpiece?
Orson Welles: I have no psychological baggage because film is such a different medium. Movies are not illustrations of novels. Their function is not to simply turn words into dialogues, but to present the ideological connotation of the original in a unique way. Movies are movies and cannot be replaced. Film directors approach novels in the same way that playwrights adapt novels—the original material is just a springboard, and the director creates new work. So I have no qualms about adapting Kafka's novels. If you look at cinema as a serious art, you realize that film adaptations are not an illustration of the original but have the same value as novels.
asks: So in your opinion, this is not a "film based on Kafka's novel", but a new work based on "The Trial"?
Orson Welles: Not even "based on", this is a film inspired by a novel, and Kafka is my collaborator, my partner. It may sound pompous, but it is an Orson Welles film, although I try to stay true to the Kafka spirit. The novel was written in the early 1920s, but we made the movie in 1962. But now it has become my work, and in that sense, I want to give it more legitimacy.
Q: There have been many different interpretations of The Trial over the years. Many say it's a fable of a man against authority, and others say it symbolizes the struggle of man against an invincible evil... Do you think you've represented that in the film?
Orson Welles: I think a movie, or a good movie, should elicit as many interpretations as a good book. Creative artists should refrain from analyzing their own work, so please forgive me for not wanting to answer that question. I recommend you to watch this movie, it has its own unique interpretation, I hope you can have your own understanding of it.
Q: I wasn't surprised when I heard you were filming The Trial, because I think you're good at presenting the deep meaning behind ordinary stories. Did your cooperation with your "partner" Kafka go well this time?
Orson Welles: It's funny you say that because I was surprised when I realized I was doing this. To my surprise, I got it done. It's a very expensive movie, a big production. Maybe five years ago, no distributor or producer would be willing to cast such a film, but recently the global film industry has begun to change, and filmmakers have ushered in a new moment, I don't mean To say that we are better filmmakers is to say that the old distribution system has begun to crumble, and audiences are more open and willing to accept films that are harder to understand than they used to be. So in this sense, The Trial is a democratized work, an avant-garde film.
Q: Do you think it makes sense now that a movie like The Trial has a bigger budget to meet audiences in commercial theaters?
Orson Welles: It certainly makes sense, it's a good thing. I mean, a lot of seemingly difficult subjects are now being made into mainstream movies that are both high quality and popular with audiences, like Hiroshima Love and in Marionbad last year. I don't really like these two movies, but I'm very happyThey can meet the audience. I think Alain Resnais might hate The Trial! But more importantly, such a seemingly experimental film can enter the mainstream audience's field of vision and compete with those commercial films. In other words, the traditional commercial movie is dying, and I feel that this brings a turn and hope for new movies.
Q: What do you think The Trial would have looked like if it had been filmed five years ago?
Orson Welles: I don't think it would have been made five years ago, but if it had been made it would have only been shown in art theaters and it would have been made into a long, obscure, experimental film - not a movie starring Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and so many stars as it is now! You can imagine what it means to me to make this work, it's my first directing job in four years!
Q: So you've always loved movies, right?
Orson Welles: Yes! I'm already stuck. If I were just working in the theater, I think I'd probably be rehearsing all the time. But after getting into film and making film, I think it's the best, most beautiful art form I've ever seen, and one that I want to keep trying. As you said, I fell in love with movies, really, really.
Q: I heard there was a scene in the movie: Katina Passiono, a computer scientist, told K that his ultimate fate might be suicide. But in the current version we can no longer see this scene.
Orson Welles: Yeah, it was a long scene, maybe 10 minutes, and I cut it out the day before the Paris premiere. The content of this scene is that Joseph K asks the computer to tell his fortune, which is my idea. At the time we were still mixing and it was very close to the premiere, and I had only seen the whole film once, and at the last minute, I decided to cut this scene out. It was supposed to be the best scene in the whole movie, but it clearly didn't live up to its expectations. Obviously something went wrong, I can't figure it out. The theme of this scene is "free will", and it has the color of black humor ; it is also a topic I have always wanted to discuss. Both K and I oppose the suppression of people by systems and machines, and yearn for freedom.
Q: Why did you choose to shoot most of the film in Yugoslavia?
Orson Welles: The stories we're dealing with can take place "anywhere" in my opinion, but of course this place doesn't exist. When people talk about the universality of this story, you have to realize where it started. Kafka was born in Prague , so in search of a similar scene to Austro-Hungarian , I went to Zagreb in northwest Yugoslavia. I didn't go to Czechoslovakia because Kafka's books have not been published there and his works are still "exiled" there.
Q: If you had a choice, would you go to Czechoslovakia?
Orson Welles: Yeah, I've been wondering what it would be like to shoot The Trial in Czechoslovakia, seems like it should be Czechoslovakia, because that's where Kafka wrote most of his s work. The final shot of the film was shot in Zagreb, where the old streets look a lot like Prague. Looking for a modern European city with Austro-Hungarian temperament, this is not the only reason we are shooting in Yugoslavia, there is also an important reason that we want to shoot a large industrial exposition scene, need to shoot huge buildings, more than film production. The studio is much bigger. There was a scene in the film where we needed to fit 1,500 tables in a building space, but no studio in France or the UK could fit it. We found a large factory in Zagreb. As such, the location brings a dingy modern feel, as if diving into the dark heart of the 19th century and becoming part of the film’s style.
Q: You shot a lot of footage at the Gare d'Orsay, an abandoned train station in Paris.
Orson Welles: Yeah, there's a really weird story about that. We shot in Paris for two weeks and then planned to go to Yugoslavia right away and set the scene there. News came at 6 p.m. Saturday: Not only was the set not ready, but construction had not even begun.
There weren't any studios in Paris that could be used for sets. It was Saturday and we were supposed to be shooting in Zagreb on Monday! We had to cancel everything and suspend filming. I was pacing back and forth in my hotel room. I looked at the huge moon outside the window, it was a bright full moon. Two moons appeared miraculously before my eyes, like signs from heaven. There were numbers on each moon, and I realized then that they were the clocks of the Orsay train station. At 5am, I walked out of the room and into the empty train station, where I saw the world of Kafka - the lawyer's office, the court's office, the silent corridors, everything with a kind of Jules Verne's -style modernity, I think it fits the temperament of Kafka's novels. By 8 in the morning, I decided to shoot here for the next seven weeks.
If you've seen the film, you'll see that a lot of the scenes were shot at this train station, and it's not only a beautiful place, but it's also full of sadness—the kind of sadness that comes with the crowd waiting on the platform. I know it sounds mysterious, but the train station is actually a place surrounded by ghosts. The story of The Trial is about people who wait, waiting for their papers to be signed. The entire film is filled with a sense of hopelessness battling bureaucracy. The process of waiting for documents to be signed is like waiting for a train, there are many refugees in the Orsay train station, they are sent to concentration camps here, Algerians gather here, so it is a place full of sadness. Of course, the undertones of my films are also bleak, so in short, the train station infuses the film with an impression of realism.
Q: Has the use of the Orsay train station changed your vision for the film?
Orson Welles: Yeah, I was also planning to make The Trial a completely different film without sets. As I did, the work consists of fading sets. There will be fewer and fewer elements of realism, and the audience will be aware of this, so that the set will be reduced to only open space, as if everything has dissolved. This huge abandoned train station brings a sense of desolation and emptiness to the film. It was a huge set.
Q: How do you feel about The Trial yourself? Do you think this work is finished?
Orson Welles: This morning, I ran into Peter Ustinov on the train, and his new movie, "Battle of the Seas," just started filming. I said to him, "How do you feel about your movie, do you like it?" He replied, "I don't 'like it,' I'm proud of it!" I wish I could be as confident as him. I am grateful for the opportunity to do The Trial. I enjoyed the filming process, but not the editing part. Anyway, I think The Trial is the best movie I've ever made.
Q: How did you respond to the audience's comments?
Orson WeirS: I think that's an interesting question. I don't think the great art form of film forces the director to think about the audience. In fact, I don't think it's possible to think about the audience. If I were writing a play, maybe I would think about what Broadway and West End audiences would like to see, given their social status, given their tastes. But when it comes to movies, I never think about what the audience thinks. I just went and made a movie like a writer wrote and hoped the audience would accept it. I don't know what the public will say about The Trial. Freely express in the work, "The Trial" is not made for a certain kind of people, but a film made for all people. It's not only for the current audience, but as long as the art of cinema still exists, I think it will be seen by more audiences.
