West End Library Virtual Film Club

"Il Posto" and "The Trial"

The West End Library Virtual Film Club is a biweekly discussion group in which we examine two films during each meeting!

Every one of the films we discuss will be available to view for free on the Kanopy streaming service (http://www.kanopy.com), accessible through your DC Public Library card. The aim of the group is to engage with a deep and diverse pool of film history—we will explore films both classic and contemporary, from a variety of artistic movements and regions.

On March 24th, we will discuss two unique films: Italian director Ermanno Olmi’s 1961 movie Il Posto and The Trial, Orson Welles’ extravagant and expressionistic adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel of the same name. These movies explore the absurdity of bureaucracy through wildly divergent styles.  

The group meets virtually via Google Meet. Please contact Cody at cody.walker@dc.gov for information on how to join. See you there! 

The Trial (1962) 

“Say what you like”, Orson Welles said in 1962, “but The Trial is the best film I ever made”. Opinions may differ, but The Trial is as striking and ambitious as anything in his filmography. After producer Alexander Salkind offered Welles the chance to direct an adaptation of a public domain literary work, Welles selected Franz Kafka’s The Trial—which turned out to not be in the public domain after all. Developing a new structure and modern setting for the novel’s story, Welles cast Anthony Perkins to play Kafka’s Josef K, a lowly bureaucrat who wakes up one day charged with a crime that the police refuse to specify. Thrust into the cogs of an overwhelming bureaucracy, Josef K tries futilely to assert his innocence. Shot in the former Yugoslavia (with Zagreb as a substitute for Prague), France, and Italy, the film features an international cast to match—including Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Welles himself. Featuring innovative cinematography and a fearless, unconventional approach to narrative, this is an adaptation only Welles could have directed.  

Il Posto (1961) 

Ermanno Olmi, born and raised in northern Italy, became interested in film during the burgeoning neorealist movement in the late 1940s. Working at an electrical company in Milan, he began to produce documentaries on subjects such as power plants, eventually transitioning to feature-length fiction filmmaking. Il Posto is his second feature, a coming-of-age story centering on, Domenico, a young man who travels from his village to Milan in order to secure a job to support his family. Between alienating interviews and assimilation into a stultifying workplace, Domenico’s preparation for his “job for life” is as absurd as anything Kafka wrote. Olmi imbues the neorealist roots of Il Posto with a dry comic sensibility, and his realistic visual style stands in stark contrast to Welles’ grandstanding. Humanist but not didactic, Il Posto remains one of the best portrayals of alienation in the white-collar workplace. Olmi went on to win a Palme d’Or for his 1978 film The Tree of Wooden Clogs, a realistic portrayal of peasant life in the late 19th century.  

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