Plot
Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is awakened in his apartment one morning by two police officers who inform him that he is under open arrest. The officers decline to identify the crime that Josef K. is being charged with, nor do they take him into custody. When the officers leave, Josef K. converses with his landlady, Mrs. Grubach (Madeleine Robinson), and his neighbor, Miss Burstner (Jeanne Moreau), about what transpired. He later goes to his office, where he is reprimanded by his superior for allegedly having improper relations with his female teenage cousin. That evening, Josef K. goes to the opera, but is taken from the theater by a police inspector (Arnoldo Foà) and is brought to a courtroom, where his attempts to confront the peculiar nature of his case are in vain. He later returns to his office and discovers the two police officers who first visited him are being whipped in a small room. Josef K.’s uncle Max recommends that he consult with Hastler (Orson Welles), a law advocate. After brief encounters with the wife of a courtroom guard (Elsa Martinelli) and a room full of condemned men waiting for trial, Josef K. has an interview with Hastler, which proves unsatisfactory. Hastler’s mistress (Romy Schneider) suggests that Josef K. seek out the advice of the artist Titorelli (William Chappell), but this is also not helpful. Seeking refuge in a cathedral, Josef K. learns from a priest (Michael Lonsdale) that he has been condemned to death. Hastler abruptly appears at the cathedral to confirm the priest’s information. On the evening before his thirty-first birthday, Josef K. is apprehended by two executioners and is brought to a quarry, where he is forced to remove some of his clothing. The executioners give the condemned man a knife, but he refuses to commit suicide. The executioners leave Josef K. in a quarry pit and throw dynamite at him. Josef K. laughs at his executioners and picks the dynamite up. Then from a distance there is an explosion and the smoke from the dynamite billows into the air.
Read more about this topic: The Trial (1962 Film)
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“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
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