Melancholy is not a mental state, ie it is not tortured stupidity; it is a condition made up of two parts. In Kafka's work the condition is one of extreme distortion: the distortion of time and space; Orson Welles shows this in his film of The Trial: K can barely fit in the room; Samsa, once metamorphosed, is too big for his room.For a more complete treatment in the cinema of these distortions see Sokurov's Faustus: the characters in the film are constantly struggling to find the space to move past each other-or see any of Svankmajer,s work especially The Flat. Expressionism represents extreme states of being just as this. In film it is an extremity of gesture eg the M on the clenched claw-like hand at the beginning of Lang's film. Kafka's Trial has many gestures like this; a man presses himself against a woman, gazing up at the ceiling and shrieking; a woman fetches a handbag dragging herself across the whole length of the room. Imagine all this in the graphic setting of M. Imagine further a language of gestures in Kafka: on the one hand there are graphic, extreme situations; on the other there are responses to these situations: responses that befit a gentleman jockey or Red Indian; whereas the woman 'drags herself'' these figures are light and airy almost taking flight like the bucket rider. That is not to say these lighter touches are solutions. They are melancholy gestures. The condition may be inescapable but it calls for an imaginative, airier response.
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