Films Based On Franz Kafka's Works

by Eugenio Montale

This is nonfiction commentary. Chapters: The Trial, Kafka, the Castle, Klassenverhaltnisse, Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, Zoetrope. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 33. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Trial (also known as Le Proces) is a 1962 film directed by Orson Welles, who also wrote the screenplay based on the novel by Franz Kafka. Welles stated in an interview with the BBC that "The Trial is the best film I have ever made." The film begins with Welles narrating Kafka's parable, "Before the Law," to pinscreen scenes created by Alexandre Alexeieff. 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 Foa) 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. Hastlers mistress (Romy Schneider) suggests that Josef...http: //booksllc.net/?id=4084601

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Eugenio Montale was born on October 12, 1896 in Genoa, Italy. He was the youngest son of Domenico Montale and Giuseppina (Ricci) Montale. They were brought up in a business atmosphere, as their father was a trader in chemicals. Ill health cut short his formal education and he was therefore a self-taught man free from conditioning except that of his own will and person. He spent his summers at the family villa in a village. This small village was near the Ligurian Riviera, an area which has had a profound influence on his poetry and other works. Originally Montale aspired to be an opera singer and trained under the famous baritone Ernesto Sivori. Surprisingly he changed his profession and went on to become a poet who can be considered the greatest of the twentieth century’s Italian poets and one who won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1975 "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions."