Release
Welles initially planned to premiere The Trial at the Venice Film Festival in September 1962, but the film was not completed in time. The festival organizers showed the Academy Award winning musical West Side Story instead.
Welles continued to edit the film up until its December 1962 premiere in Paris. In an interview with the BBC, he mentioned that on the eve of the premiere he jettisoned a ten-minute sequence (it is actually about six minutes long) where Josef K. meets with a computer scientist (played by Greek actress Katina Paxinou) who uses her technology to predict his fate. Welles explained the last-minute cut by noting: "I only saw the film as a whole once. We were still in the process of doing the mixing, and then the premiere fell on us... It should have been the best in the film and it wasn't. Something went wrong, I don't know why, but it didn't succeed."
The Trial opened theatrically in the U.S. in 1963. Over the years, the film has polarized critics and Welles’ scholars and biographers. For example, Charles Higham’s 1970 biography on Welles dismissed the film as "an agonizing experience ... a dead thing, like some tablet found among the dust of forgotten men." But in his 1996 biography on Welles, David Thomson said the film was "an astonishing work, and a revelation of the man ... a stunning film."
The film won the "Best Film" award of the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics in 1964.
Despite continued criticism of the film (mentioned above), a more contemporary analysis alludes to the film's lasting effect and hints at the genius within the film as created by Welles. Welles never agreed with the critical comments regarding the film's poor quality, saying "Say what you like, but 'The Trial' was the best film I ever made." Today, the film enjoys enthused reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with 88% of critics awarding the film a positive review. Prolific film critic, Roger Ebert, called the film "an exuberant use of camera placement and movement and inventive lighting," awarding it four out of a possible four stars.
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