The Story Archive

The Trial

Orson Welles · 1962 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A bank clerk wakes to two men standing in his room to inform him he is under arrest on a charge nobody will name, and is told to carry on working while the process runs its course. Doorways open onto vast typing floors, a painter's attic and a cathedral, all of them somehow the same building. Welles shot much of it in the abandoned Gare d'Orsay and called it the best thing he ever made.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
AllegoryPsychological
Theme
Existential AbsurdityGuilt & ConscienceIndividual vs SocietyIsolation & Alienation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanThreshold GuardianShadow
Plot structure
TrialLabyrinth PlotDream Vision
Symbol / motif
The TrialThe LabyrinthThe PrisonThe Machine
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
AbsurdistAllegoricalNoir
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues