The Trial

What happens in the film and novel

Josef K. dies in Welles’s film. At the quarry, he laughs at the men sent to kill him; an explosion brings the encounter to an end. The laugh gives his final response a defiant quality, even though it does not save his life.

In Chapter Ten of Kafka’s novel, the men pass a knife between them. K. thinks he should take it and kill himself, but does not. One man restrains him while the other stabs him. The published ending is therefore a killing by the executioners, despite K.’s troubled thoughts about co-operating.

How Welles explains the change

In his 1962 BBC interview with Huw Wheldon, Welles says he wanted K. to remain defiant. He explicitly confirms that K. is murdered in the film. Welles connects his revision to the Holocaust, arguing that he could not present the earlier ending unchanged after the Nazi death camps. That is the director’s explanation of his adaptation; it does not establish what Kafka would have written later.

Jonathan Lethem’s Criterion essay reports that the smoke’s resemblance to a mushroom cloud was unintended. Production circumstances then prevented Welles from replacing the image. A nuclear reading is possible for a viewer, but it should remain distinct from Welles’s stated intention.