Amazon.com reviews for
Le procès (1962) More at IMDbPro »

Citizen Welles - The Stranger, The Trial, Hearts of Age (dvd):

Amazon.com video review: For budget-minded cineastes, this two-disc set of Orson Welles films is a welcome addition to any DVD library, even if it falls short of its claims. While the accompanying documentary demonstrates that The Stranger, The Trial, and Welles's 1934 silent short Hearts of Age have been restored, source materials are not specified, inviting speculation that the films were digitally "cleaned" from video sources in the public domain. The films do sound better than ever with a subtle 5.1-channel remastering, and the visual quality is good but hardly pristine; Milestone Video's DVD of The Trial presents a crisper, sharper image.

Those quibbles aside, the set's strengths do make for an acceptable and affordable means to appreciate Welles's visual ingenuity, stylized by cinematographer Russell Metty in Welles's conventional Nazi-manhunt thriller The Stranger, and by Edmond Richard in the brilliant, budget-constrained production of Kafka's The Trial. The films are excellent, and apart from critic Jeffrey Lyons's flaccid commentary tracks, this package treats them with all due respect. --Jeff Shannon

The Trial (vhs):

Amazon.com Essentials: Orson Welles's 1962 take on Franz Kafka's nightmare comedy stars Anthony Perkins as a twitchy K, a man accused of a crime that is never specified. The story has been filmed several times over the years, but not quite with the air of noir fable Welles brings to it. Beginning with an unexpected prologue in which Welles, in voiceover, tells a haunting parable while we look at artwork by pioneer pinscreen animators Claire Parker and Alexandre Alexeieff, The Trial is one surprising and visually startling chapter after another. The sense of an unrelieved, labyrinthine passage through an incoherent world--in which a very real but determinedly unclear guilt dogs poor K--is merciless but compelling to see, and resonates profoundly with Welles's obsession with the power and nature of illusion. A cast heavy on female icons from the '60s includes Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, and Romy Schneider. Welles favorite Akim Tamiroff is also on hand, and Welles himself plays the Advocate. --Tom Keogh