The Trial · reception & legacy

1962 · Orson Welles

How The Trial has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Critics in 1962 largely called it cold, cluttered, a betrayal of Kafka — and Welles stunned them by calling it the best film he'd ever made. Decades of restorations later, cinephiles have largely come around to his side, and it now sits comfortably in the top tier of his filmography.

What's debated

The forever-debate: is it the definitive Kafka adaptation or a Welles ego trip that steamrolls the novel — with a side argument over whether casting Anthony Perkins, fresh off Psycho, was inspired or too on-the-nose?

Its footprint

Its cavernous bureaucratic spaces — that endless open-plan office of typists — became visual shorthand for institutional nightmare, echoing through everything from Brazil to countless dystopias; the pin-screen 'Before the Law' prologue is a beloved object in its own right. Poor public-domain prints circulated for decades, which is partly why its rediscovery felt like an event.

Where it stands

The classic 'go beyond Citizen Kane' pick — a onetime orphan of the Welles filmography that Letterboxd-era cinephiles have pushed firmly into the canon.

★ Did you know? When financing for elaborate sets collapsed, Welles improvised and shot much of the film inside the abandoned Gare d'Orsay railway station in Paris — the same building that later became the Musée d'Orsay — and he also dubbed several supporting characters' voices himself.