"Josef K von 1963...": Orson Welles' ‘Americanized’ Version of The Trial and the changing functions of the Kafkaesque in Postwar West Germany
This article investigates the reception of the American auteur and actor Orson Welles' adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial in West Germany in 1963. It argues that the film’s ambivalent reception by German critics was closely tied to the process of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (coming to t...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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European Association for American Studies
2009-08-01
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| Series: | European Journal of American Studies |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/7610 |
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| Summary: | This article investigates the reception of the American auteur and actor Orson Welles' adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Trial in West Germany in 1963. It argues that the film’s ambivalent reception by German critics was closely tied to the process of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (coming to terms with the past) that had developed in Germany during the mid-1950s with the widespread circulation and publication of visual images of Nazi war crimes, and that was in the process of a more politicized transformation in the early sixties. Through the figure of Welles, this essay also explores the ways U.S. culture could influence this process. Welles’ reading of Kafka as a “prophet of fascism”, whose Josef K. actively resists his oppressors—even if to no apparent avail—set off a timely discussion among commentators about the meaning and function of Kafka’s works in post-war West Germany. In 1963, in the midst of spectacular court cases and “trials” that began to highlight the widespread complicity of Germans in National Socialist war crimes, the theme of “active resistance” to tyranny that Welles’ version of The Trial offered did not fit the picture. It was, as one critic suggested, a distorted, “Americanized” fantasy. Others, however, appreciated the didactic value of Welles’ international co-production, which coincided with the beginnings of the New German Cinema movement, a confrontational effort to engage with questions of the past through film. |
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| ISSN: | 1991-9336 |