The Trial (Dava)

Orson Welles wrote and directed Le Procès (The Trial), a 1962 black-and-white co-production between France, West Germany and Italy, adapted from Franz Kafka's posthumously published 1925 novel. It opens with Welles narrating Kafka's parable 'Before the Law'. The story follows Josef K., a bank clerk who wakes one morning to find policemen in his room announcing that proceedings have been opened against him, though nobody ever reveals what he is charged with. As he struggles to uncover the accusation and clear his name, he is drawn ever deeper into an irrational, suffocating machinery of justice.

Anthony Perkins plays Josef K., while Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider and Elsa Martinelli portray women who enter his life and his trial in different ways, and Welles himself appears as the Advocate, the film's chief opposing figure. Welles declared upon finishing the picture that it was the best film he had ever made. Often praised for its scenic design and disorienting cinematography, its standing has grown over the decades, with critics such as Roger Ebert calling it a masterpiece.