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the pit. Josef laughs at his executioners and picks up the dynamite. From a distance
there is an explosion and smoke billows into the air.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial_(1962_film)
Synposis
Born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, capital of what is now the Czech Republic,
writer Franz Kafka grew up in an upper middle-class Jewish family. After
studying law at the University of Prague, he worked in insurance and
wrote in the evenings. In 1923, he moved to Berlin to focus on writing, but
died of tuberculosis shortly after. His friend Max Brod published most of
his work posthumously, such as Amerika and The Castle.
Early Years
Writer Franz Kafka was the eldest son of an upper middle-class Jewish
family who was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, a
kingdom that was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Kafka had a difficult relationship with both of his parents. His mother, Julie,
was a devoted homemaker who lacked the intellectual depth to
understand her son's dreams to become a writer. Kafka's father, Hermann,
had a forceful personality that often overwhelmed the Kafka home. He
was a success in business, making his living retailing men's and women's
clothes.
Kafka's father had a profound impact on both Kafka's life and writing. He
was a tyrant of sorts, with a wicked temper and little appreciation for his
son's creative side. Much of Kafka's personal struggles, in romance and
other relationships, came, he believed, in part from his complicated
relationship with his father. In his literature, Kafka's characters were often
coming up against an overbearing power of some kind, one that could
easily break the will of men and destroy their sense of self-worth.
Education
German was his first language. In fact, despite his Czech background and
Jewish roots, Kafka's identity favored German culture.
Kafka was a smart child who did well in school even at the Altstdter
Staatsgymnasium, an exacting high school for the academic elite. Still,
even while Kafka earned the respect of his teachers, he chafed under their
control and the school's control of his life.
After high school Kafka enrolled at the Charles Ferdinand University of
Prague, where intended to study chemistry but after just two weeks
switched to law. The change pleased his father, and also gave Kafka the
time to take classes in art and literature.
In 1906 Kafka completed his law degree and embarked on a year of
unpaid work as a law clerk.
Love and Health
At work Kafka was a popular employee, easy to socialize with and seen as
somebody with a good sense of humor. But his personal life still raged
with complications. His inhibitions and insecurities plagued his
relationships. Twice he was engaged to marry his girlfriend, Felice Bauer,
before the two finally went their separate ways in 1917.
Later, Kafka later fell in love with Dora Dymant (Diamant), who shared his
Jewish roots and a preference for socialism. Amidst Kafka's increasingly
dire health, the two fell in love and lived together in Berlin. Their
relationship largely centered on Kafka's illnesses. For many years, even
before he contracted tuberculosis, Kafka had not been well. Constantly
strained and stressed, he suffered from migraines, boils, depression,
anxiety and insomnia.
http://www.biography.com/people/franz-kafka-9359401
Because Franz Kafka has become the poster boy for twentieth-century
alienation and disoriented anxiety, his work is often introduced in the
context of Kafka's own experience of alienation. A Czech in the AustroHungarian empire, a German-speaker among Czechs, a Jew among
German-speakers, a disbeliever among Jews; alienated from his pragmatic
and overbearing father, from his bureaucratic job, from the opposite sex;
caught between a desire to live in literature and to live a normal bourgeois
life; acutely and lucidly self-critical; physically vulnerable--Kafka nowhere
found a comfortable fit.
Throughout his life, Kafka's memories of his childhood, and in particular of
his childhood relationship to his upwardly-mobile, harsh father, remained
bitter.
While a law student, he associated with many members of Prague's
burgeoning scene of young, German- speaking writers.
Kafka knew writing was his vocation, but did not feel he could make a
living at it--nor did he particularly want to try. It was something purer and
more desperately personal to him--a "form of prayer" and a temporary
respite from his demons.
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/trial/context.html
people participated in the war, nine million of whom died, and by its end
in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman empires
had ceased to exist. The war was also significant because so many
technologies were used for the first time, such as tanks, airplanes, poison
gases, and new forms of artillery, resulting in a previously unimaginable
scale of destruction. Kafka did not fight in World War I, first because his
job was considered essential, and later because of his tuberculosis,
although he wanted to enlist. After the war, Hungary split off from Austria
and became Communist. Scholars still argue about whether Kafka's
writings support Communism or malign it, or even if Kafka is political at
all. As for his religion, Kafka wrote that he felt separate from his Jewish
heritage, though some scholars define him as an exemplar of Jewish
literature. He died before World War II, but all three of his sisters perished
in the Holocaust.
http://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-trial
http://www.popmatters.com/feature/175398-aspects-of-orson-orson-welles-the-trial-astudy-in-transcendental-so/
Nightmare like
Elusive tale throughout the film supposed to just believe what
people who claim to be in an authoritative position say not even
confirmed that the gentlemen who out Mr K under open arrest are
policeman/people of authority.
Mr K tortured, taunted and at the mercy of a mysterious higher
power.
Allegory of the individual against authority.
Symbolic of man fighting against implacable evil
Power of women render Mr K helpless in some way - is it a fantasy
or deliberate? Conspiring against him/working with authorities?
Feeling of a dream or maybe nightmare
Space convey meaning and emotion elaborate and lofty spaces
or claustrophobic/confined ones
Lighting hard in black and white
Fraught with paranoia and disorientation
Occasional banal dialogue
Lost in a bureaucratic system a maze
Feelings of entrapment and bewilderment
Everything is connected to everything else, yet nothing is
connected.
The Law or State is not represented by any particular voice, person
or locale its intangible cant find it/fight it its abstract.
Over-sized law threatens to bury him alive
Power corrupts
Travels further up the food chain of authority, discovers more
depravity and corruption.
Welles uses expressionistic tools in his film making to highlight the
absurd nature of the film.
The women he becomes involved in, in their own way, are functions
of the system that persecutes him.