The Trial (1962), directed by Orson Welles. Trylon Cinema, Sunday, April 23.

Orson Welles’ The Trial was recently restored, a sad story, really, considering it was released over sixty years ago–once again (for Welles) the victim of his piecemeal financing and distribution deals. No one saw it in 1962 and of the few that did, most didn’t understand it. When I first heard this, I was enraged–how the hell do you not see The Trial as a masterpiece? Well, this is right around the time no one got The Manchurian Candidate, either, so I guess it was what it was. Seeing it for the first time with a decent print (I don’t even remember how I saw it before, but I think it was on a super shitty VHS tape rented at Discount Video in Uptown, a once-great, almost always frustrating store). This time it was astonishing, with its bizarre camerawork, amazing sets conjured up in some Brutalist wasteland in France on no money, its incredible actors in every role. Welles did more in this movie with virtually no money than Spielberg has ever done with all his big budgets (except maybe Jaws and Raiders, though The Trial is much more imaginative). The movie is truly Kafkaesque, but also with a very strange underlying and uncomfortable sexuality. Also, it boasts, in Anthony Perkins, one of the best performances ever in one of Welles’ films. His movies have a lot of great actors, but they’re usually great thespians, ACTORS!, and this is an almost method performance, bizarre and moving. Perkins said it was his proudest moment as an actor.

Looking at this movie, I’ll say that if Welles was doing whatever he could to get funding for his movies, well, then I’ll be more forgiving of his weird frozen pea and cheap wine commercials. Had he only raised enough to finish his seafaring noir, The Deep. Seeing what he did with The Trial, the mind reels at the possibility.