Andrew Board

ENG 364

Balcerzak

12/2/12

Orson Welles and the Kafkaesque

Orson Welles was an iconoclastic adapter of literary texts. He began his career in

Shakespeare and constantly found new ways to, as Ezra Pound said, make it new. This

Modernist aesthetic served him well in cinema, in which the new language of film forced

him to recast, revision, and recontextualize the literature that influenced him. Perhaps the

most challenging text to bring to film was The Trial by Franz Kafka. Kafka's universe,

dictated by its own dream-like logic, would pose a challenge to any filmmaker,

considering his works capture a world strangely reflective of the divided, agonized inner

state of his protagonists. However, Welles forged a career exploring this exact theme. The

Trial, therefore, is simply his most obvious film in this Kafkaesque universe. Mr. Arkadin

was made several years before the Kafka adaptation, yet it serves as almost a precursor to

that film: The post-war setting fulfills Kafka's dour prophecy of a world in pieces, the

protagonist must wander among the dispossessed seeking the truth which will ulitmately

save his life, and the antogonist looms imposingly over the bleak landscape,

simultaneously omniscient and ineffectual. Welles' cinematic style, likewise, visualizes

this non-sensical world in noirish urban environments, among ruins and castles

suggestive of the long established order fallen into decay.

 The Trial opens with Welles narrating the cryptic parable "Before The Law," the

centerpiece of Kafka's novel. The parable is presented in still images. The story concludes

with Welles telling the viewer, "This tale is told during the story, called The Trial. It's

been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream, or a nightmare." Why begin

the film with arguably the most famous passage of the novel, in which it does not occur

until close to the end? The answer could be symmetry; it is reprised in roughly the same

chronology as the novel. The prologue casts a new light on the film itself, wheras its

placement in the novel presents K with a possible perspective on his own trial, on his

own standing before the law. The static, monochromatic image of the door echoes

thoughout the film. James Naremore states, "The various doors are among the cheif

symbols of K's dream world, and are one of the principal methods of achieveing

transitions from one stage of action to the next" (208).

The story proper begins in the closed space of Josef K's apartment. He awakes;

the over the shoulder shot frames the entire room. A door opens, a man in black steps

through without knocking; the framing of the door echoes the image of the door of the

Law closing Immediately the familiar world shatters. K himself is slow to realize this, he

answers the man's questions in a sleepy state, until he begins to question the purpose of

this man in his room, and why he would step out of his neighbor's room. The camera is a

wide shot, level with the Inspector in the foreground, yet the ceiling is still in full view, a

wry, claustrophobic reversal of Welles signature low-angle shot. The second officer steps

in from the hall; the two interrogate K until he stumbles from their leaps of logic. When

asked about his phonograph, he calls it a "pornograph." This Freudian slip is a subtle clue

to into the workings of the story; the subconcious, irrational world intruding on the
rational. The soundtrack plays a similar role of reflecting the visuals; a classical piece,

which James Naremore identifies as "Albinoni's Adagio forming a sad, yearning musical

leitmotif that enhances the continual gliding rhythm of the shots," and in contrast, a

bopping jazz motif, which as a genre is based on improvisation; "mistakes" are avenues

for new discovery, therefore, a jazz song creates its own logic, an apt accompinment to

Joseph K's nightmare. Further instance of Welles's approach to literary adaptation is Miss

Burstner's line, "Someone's been telling lies" in response to K's arrest is a near verbatim

quotation of the first line of the novel, "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph

K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning" ( Kafka

1).

Kafka's novel was published potsthumously in 1925. His body of work is

considered foundational in existential thought, a philosophy unnamed until the end of

World War II. Likeminded thinkers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, like every

rational person, were appalled at the atrocities commited during the war; what most

disgusted them was the collaboration between Southern France and Nazi Germany. The

Trial seemed to foretell the systematic way in which people were drawn into the

machinery of death. Welles' adaptation places the text in the Post-War world; it is hard

not to read the actions of the the Court as an explicit comment on the totalitarian regimes

fallen and remaining at the time. Robert Stam states, "The source novel, in this sense, can

be seen as a situated utterance produced in one medium and in one historical context,

then transformed into another equally situated utterance that is produed in a different

context and in a different medium" (68). K learns early those who work for the Court are

as guilty as he is, and can be punished as harshly as anyone else. It is a system

constructed for its own survival; it depends on individuals to surrender to it, yet its

principles are abstract as to be something less than human in its willingness to sacrifice

its own for any transgresion. In a sense, K is compliant with a similar system; his office

resembles a factory with aisles and aisles of desk drones typing away. Tracking shots

reveal no trace of indivividuality; every desk faces away from the camera, only the backs

of heads are visible.

As mentioned before, Welles explored these themes throughout his career. Citizen

Kane is an obvious choice, being the story of a nameless reporter confronted with the

dizzying, contradictory accounts of a man's life as he tries to piece together the truth of

this man's life. The reporter comes to discover the absurdity of his mission; if the

memories of those close to Kane cannot shed any light on Kane's character, for he, as

Walt Whitman described himself, contained multitudes, how can a single word sum up

the man's life? The hero of The Third Man deal with a similar dilemma. American writer

Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten, a fellow Mercury Player) arrives in Post War Vienna

searching for his good friend Harry Lime, only to discover he knows very little about his

good friend, and even less about the world in ruins across the water. Mr. Arkadin

developed out of further tales of Harry Lime, ultimately becoming a self-contained story.

Both The Trial and Mr. Arkadin feature an American actor: Anthony Perkins and

Robert Arden. With the exception of Welles himself, the casts are primarily European

actors. This casting choice is surely a political comment; once liberators of Allies in the

War, they now wander among the ruins of a once grand society that engendered them.

This reversal of power reflects the arbitrary world of Kafka. Indeed, the first shot in Mr.

Arkadin features Guy Von Stratten walking through the bombed out ruins of Poland
searching for the last link in Gregory Arkadin's past.

Von Stratten's meeting with Raina draws him into Arkadin's world. She informs

him of the "personal secretaries" at Arkadin's beck and call; actually, his network of spies

hired to keep an eye on her. Their early courtship, carried out under the noses of these

spies and Raina's English companion, is bizarrely playful. Arkadin hovers over all as

"The Ogre," Raina's nickname for him. Consistent with this is the Castle always in view,

further connecting Arkadin with a otherworldly power, born out of a past long gone. Von

Stratten meets The Ogre in the castle for a masquerade party. The guests hide behind

hideous masks a la Goya (which Von Stratten, in stereotypical American philistinism,

thinks is the name of a fellow party-goer), drink and carouse at Arkadin's behest. He

wields nearly imperctible power over people through his insistence on masks and

mandatory drinking. Each guest willingly, joyously forfeits his identity, except for Von

Stratten, whose domino mask barely covers his face, subtly rebelling against Arkadin's

dehumanizing party. In fact, Von Stratten often turns up his mask to look for his host. His

subversion of the power structure of the Castle mirrors Joseph K's defiant ignorance of

the Court. Despite all of Arkadin's precautions, Von Stratten intuitively identifies the

masked host in a corridor suggestive of a prison cell, comically undermining Arkadin's

power.

The truth of Arkadin's past has been dispersed with the ravages of war and time.

His identitity is literally divided among those who knew him. As the story unflds, Von

Stratten discvovers Arkadin's past was not so savory, nor were his intentions for this

investigation. Von Stratten initially intends to blackmail Arkadin with details of which he

knew nothing, and turns to trying to save the last surviving member of Arkadin's old
gang. Arkadin is not so intimidated by an Army tribunal, but by the trial of his daughter's

love and respect. His refusal to accept that he was once like Von Stratten leads him to

further violence, "By killing his past, Arkadin is attempting to change his nature.

However, the at of killing reinforces the fact that his nature has not changed" (Fitzgerald

57). He shadows Von Stratten, killing his old cohorts, even an old lover. He becomes an

ogre, something supernatural and uncanny in his attempt to destroy all memories of his

past, his identity to preserve the self he created out of the winter of 1927. His generosity

wins him friends among the exiles and expatriates who frequent his parties, yet it is

always on his terms, with the expectation they will comply with his demands. Without his

slavish guests, he is impotent. His failure to get a seat on the airplane at the end is

because he is no longer among the transients, but with people with a direction, with a

home to return to. Von Stratten slips among these people anonymously mocking Arkadin:

"I'm Grigory Arkadin!" "Yeah, and I'm Santa Claus!" the passengers laugh and ignore

Arkadin. He stands helplessly roped off in a airport; the ropes create a small labyrith like

the one he invited Von Stratten to navigate, however it is now transparent; his identity is

uncovered, and his power is gone.

It is fair to say Orson Welles was obsessed with the nature of truth. To this end his

films employ various techniques of misdirection (flashbacks, mirrors, unreliable

narrators) to force the protagonist, and by extension, the viewer, to reflect on what truth

they are seeking. Franz Kafka, exemplary Modernist he was, focused on the subjective

state; the limits of human perception, how reality is subject to the whims of our own

psychology, our rational mind and irrational desires. Welles made only one film based on

Kafka's work, yet his work, from the formal brilliance of Citizen Kane to the pulpy thrills
of Mr. Arkadin, "...are made possible by Kafka, or at least by the modern sensibility that

Kafka largely created" (Naremore 195).

Works Cited

Fitzgerald, Martin. The Pocket Essential Orson Welles. Harpenden: Pocket Essentials,

2002. eBook.

Kafka, Franz. The Trial. New York: Schocken Books, 1968.

Naremore, James. The Magic World of Orson Welles. Texas: Southern Methodist

University Press, 2002. Print.

Stam, Robert. "Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation". (2000): n. page.

Print.Welles, Orson, dir. Mr. Arkadin. 1962. Film. 2 Dec 2012.

<http://www.hulu.com/watch/63043>.

Welles, Orson, dir. The Trial. 1962. Film. 2 Dec 2012.