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Posted: |
Mar 18, 2011 - 1:26 AM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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Soderbergh's KAFKA is one of the best pictures from the 1990s, IMO, and it resides on my favorites list.
If one likes this KAFKA, then I strongly recommend watching the 1962 adaption of Kafka's THE TRIAL, directed by Orson Welles. The monochrome photography in KAFKA was no doubt inspired by Orson Welles' masterly usage of black-and-white in THE TRIAL, which possesses dream-like surrealism via sequences full of chiaroscuro. THE TRIAL is "top 10" cinema with me, and KAFKA follows suite not too far away...
Glad to know there are a few others here who appreciate this film!
I avoided THE TRIAL because I couldn't believe Anthony Perkins in such a role; go figure. However, I must have been under a dark cloud that day, so I will seek the film out based solely on your recommendation. 
If you have anti-Anthony Perkins tendencies, that's your perogative.
I believe even Francois Truffaut critized the casting within Welles' THE TRIAL - Truffaut thought the cast should be all Eastern Europeans to convince the audience they were Czech characters.
I disagree with this, because the whole point of being "Kafkaesque" is to be in a nameless country with unidentified authorities dominating you with red-tape bureaucracy and oppressing you into submission and unfounded guilt.
Orson Welles captures this nightmarish environment very well, I think.
Besides, even if you prefer not to accept Anthony Perkins, there's Romy Schneider and Elsa Martinelli in the cast. I hope you won't object to them!
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Posted: |
Mar 18, 2011 - 4:12 AM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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Actually, there's an alternative, highly convincing interpretation of what Kafka's books were about.
The guilt is real, or at least believed to be real by the self, subconsciously. Every persecution is a manifestation of an internal struggle.
I'm pretty confident Kafka's subject is not Orwellian / totalitarian oppression but the torment from within the 'soul', and is much more interesting as a result.
I thoroughly recommend anyone interested in Kafka to read Kafka's Trial: The Case Against Josef K. by Eric Marson.
True, THE TRIAL is a mixture of Kafka and Welles.
The bed-ridden Welles character even asks: "We can't be all guilty,...can we?"
But Joseph K's character's did not do anything (to the reader's/viewer's knowledge) which should trigger off his internal feelings of guilt; other more dominant personalities seem to instill guilt into passive individuals (in the film, anyway).
I agree the internal aspect is very interesting, but to communicate in the first person perspective is more difficult to maintain in cinema, wherein interactions and conflicts between multiple characters creates the (melo)drama.
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I also remember seeing this on the big screen. As I recall, the production design was spectacular, but the story fell a little flat. It would be nice to give it another look.
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Posted: |
Mar 20, 2011 - 2:12 PM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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It's now my single-most desired dvd request, even topping Farewell, My Lovely. Let's hope Criterion or some such enterprising company sees that KAFKA gets a release.
In the meantime, I'll be watching The Third man and Shadows 7 Fog, as well as immersing myself in Franz Kafka's writings.
There was a region 1 release of KAFKA on VHS tape from Paramount in the '90s, but the DVD of KAFKA that is out there is on region 2 (so it is available in different ways).
Do you own a code-free/region-free DVD player?
When you watch THE THIRD MAN, see if you can determine how much the direction is by Carol Reed and how much of it is Orson Welles!
SHADOWS AND FOG is a nice treat (one of the few Woody Allen films I got on home video). Allen's SHADOWS AND FOG is a wider homage to Germanic Expressionism than only Kafka; Fritz Lang is evoked, plus there's a circus environment probably in deference to the silent VARIETY.
Also, are you aware that Kino issued on DVD an adaption of Kafka's THE CASTLE, directed by Michael Haneke?
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Possible Spoilers:
I saw this film when I lived in Seattle and went the first weekend it opened. I've never thought too much about it in the years since however there is an element in the film that was, (for me), the stuff of nightmares in it's effectiveness to frighten. I'm not sure where in the film it took place, but there's a scene in an old elevator going down to ground level. I think Jeremy Irons is in it and being pursued by a raving lunatic (with a knife?). But it was the shrieking and truly disturbing maniacal laughing that the lunatic made as he pursued the desperate Jeremy Irons that has made the deep impression on me, all these years later.
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