Orson Welles and David Fincher

Even if your opinion of Orson Welles is less that complimentary, it is hard to say that he wasn’t a man of talent and vision. His still is unique and he is not one to be perfectly copied but he has left his mark in cinema history. This is a mark that many directors pick up on and try to mirror. I find David Fincher to be one of those directors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QgFWXLN-ug

This is a link to the trail for Fight Club. Both Fincher and Welles took popular books and turned them into movies. If you’ve never seen Fight Club, the trailer sums up the premise. This is a man living a dull life and one day something extraordinary happens to him. New people come into his life and soon it becomes chaotic and confused. Most of all, it becomes dangerous and deadly. This is the same basic premise for The Trial, just under varying circumstances. Welles and Fincher have not only adapted these books onto the big screen but they have also put their own spin on it.

First off, both movies are against something common in society. In The Trial, it is the way the law works and how no matter how much one tries, it is hard to get around it. In Fight Club, the problem is society buying into corporate standards for clothes, cars and even coffee. The move hits on those who sell out to make money and attacks them. Both of these movies show a true passion for what the message of the book was. It plays just as well on screen as it does throughout the novels.

Fincher and Welles both changed pivotal scenes in their movies for courtesy to those watching. Naremore says that Welles changed the ending of the Trial from the brutal stabbing to the explosion because it was so close to the end of the Holocaust and Kafka, though not practicing, was Jewish. In Fight Club, there is a scene where Brad Pitt’s character and Edward Norton’s character are taking about homemade recipes on making a bomb. In the book, Cuck Palahnuik writes the real recipe out for readers. Fincher decided, as an element of public safety, to cut that out and put in a fictitious recipe. Both directors, without ruining the integrity of both scenes, made changes to the story out of common courtesy. Watching the movies, you would never know the difference. Both scenes are just powerful as the way they play out in the books.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ8imPmQ0js

This is another clip that I found interesting. It’s long, it contains some spoilers, but it shows how twisted Fight Club can get. Much like the scene in The Trial with the young girls eyes staring through the slates of wood. The character of Hastler and Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden play the same role in both of these movies. I have no proof that Fincher finds inspiration in Welles but the characters are portrayed in a similar light. In the movie, they are the voice of reason. They tell the main characters how it is or how it should be. Hastler, in the end, reveals the parable of the Law and K. becomes fed up, just like Edward Norton’s character does in the later scenes of Fight Club.

Lastly, a lot of the scenes in both of these movies are mind blowing. The confusion and paranoia resonates off of the screen when you view both of these films. When K. leaves Titorelli’s home and finds that it is connected to the law offices, it is not only mind blowing but so confusing and unreal. Near the end of Fight Club, there is a scene between Pitt and Norton that is so chaotic it’s hard to grasp what is really going on. I don’t want to give anything away just in case, but look it up. It’s fantastic. And I get the same feeling from that scene that I get from the scene from The Trial.