If You Can Find this Movie SEE IT!

I Confess (1953) is one of the best films I have ever seen. I had to start the review by making that statement because this is just a forgotten gem that for whatever reason is never shown on television or elsewhere. Had it not been for DVDs it might have vanished from being available to the public at all.

PLOT

Being that Alfred Hitchcock directed you will be sure to find a story of betrayal, high tension, twists, and mystery. In this story a Catholic priest by the name of Father Logan (Montgomery Clift) gets involved in a police investigation of a murder when he takes a confession from the killer while in his church. Logan can not violate his vow to the church so he can not disclose the subject matter of the confession to anyone including the lead investigator, Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden). Normally, this would just be a case of the priest feeling helpless to assist the police but in this case Logan finds himself in deeper trouble when it is he who becomes the prime suspect after it is discovered that he was seen leaving the crime scene and having had a motive to murder the dead man. This motive has to do with helping protect his former lover, Ruth Grandford (Anne Baxter), who is now married to a powerful politician in town. Logan goes on trial for the murder and the story comes to a conclusion shortly thereafter.

CHARACTERS

Father Logan is clearly the center of the entire film and can be described as a man of unbreakable courage and conviction. Rarely do any films explore theology from this angle of inside out where you get a first person account of what it is like to be the religious authority in a situation where things are not black and white but rather everything is a shade of gray. Although the story is not told in a first person point of view from that of Father Logan, you do experience the battle he has with himself when it comes to doing what is right, what is in accord with the promise he made to the church, and how he must think beyond only his well being in the situation. Montgomery Clift was outstanding in this film and I would even go as far as to say this was his best film ever. That is saying a lot considering how great he was in From Here to Eternity (1953). Clift is from the Method school of acting where the approach is to play the role from the point of view of the character. Clift does this very well in the soft spoken personality and introspective disposition of the priest by he communicates with his eyes more than with his speech in this film. Hitchcock is not famous for making art films that give the viewer more visual information that is subtle than overt spoken or acted out script. However, with Clift you as the viewer at many times detect what Father Logan is thinking in addition to what he is doing or saying. You must look for this when you see the film since it is so very rare.

The leading lady of the film is Ruth Grandford and why she is involved in the plot is revealed in a classic Hitchcock method of providing us bits and pieces of information that fit together later down the line. Although she is married to another man and has been for seven years Ruth is still in love with Logan. She realizes that she can no longer have a future with Logan in terms of a romantic relationship that was once possible before he joined the church and before the war when they were both young adults but she does love him in a spiritual sense of caring for his well being and worrying for him. Many people with identify with Ruth because of this quality she has. Although she does not have a bad marriage or an abusive husband she does tend to wonder about the "what if's" in life had a few things turned out differently in the past few years. Anne Baxter was not originally cast for this film but came onboard after Hitchcock's first choice for Ruth was given a red light by the censors for being an unmarried woman with a child and boyfriend in the 1950s. We are lucky things played out as they did because Baxter is marvelous as Ruth. She was rather convincing as a high society type who throws black tie parties and always dresses in dark colors. However, some of her best moments in the film are when the story of the relationship Logan and Ruth had in the past is told. In those scenes she is shown to be a lively young woman and there is a sense of a metamorphosis that has taken place with her as in individual. This is another point that you will see a bit for yourself in with this character since we all tend to change so much in a matter of a few years we find it hard to believe we were once the way we were. Look for the scene where Ruth and Logan are taking shelter from the rain under a gazebo back when they were in their 20s. Anne Baxter pulls this scene off so well that it is perhaps one of the most lovely shots in all of film where she has been soaked by the rain and is worried about her watch not working as Logan moves her wet hair away from her face and she smiles. This is something that is almost impossible to put into words but that smile is just out of this world in terms of femininity, beauty, class, elegance, etc. I would have given Anne Baxter the Oscar for Best Actress just for that part of the film.

Inspector Larrue is the other half of the art versus science balance in the story since he is completely a no nonsense fact based individual. Why people did what they did is of no consequence to this man. His objective is just to recreate what has occurred and make the arrest once the fact based evidence implicates the accused as to committing the crime and breaking the law. Karl Malden was greatly underutilized in this film not so much so for his acting ability but the overly simplified plot as pertaining to his character. Larrue seems as if he is a very clever and analytical individual but the puzzle he has to solve does not match this man's ability. What occurs in the film is analogous to giving an adult engineer a set of Legos to design something with. Malden's gritty working class looks also nicely contrast the good looks of Clift and Baxter. Perhaps Hitchcock was looking to make a point about how the ordinary looking are realists and the beautiful are dreamers.

FILMING AND EDITING

Since all but the interior shots were filmed on location in Quebec City there is a very unique feel to this movie. It sort of seems like a classic old world European city like London or Paris but not as populated and constraint with expected social patterns/customs. Although Quebec city is the oldest city in Canada many people, myself included, are very unfamiliar with the local culture and way of life. Hitchcock is very artistic in his use of shadow and light to highlight the more dark moments in the plot as well as the more bright and cheerful ones; respectively. The architecture of the city is also used to create drama and effect when there would otherwise not be any.

Editing is seamless in the film because it is very hard to detect where they made cuts and spent different days filming scenes. The whole 95 minutes seems to occur in real time since the whole production is character driven and things such as props and action sequences are not vital. A scene worth mentioning is one where Ruth and Logan meet on a ferry to discuss what they will do in light of the news of the recently deceased. They discuss their desire to keep things as is and maintain the status quo as they stand motionless on the boat yet the background is moving by. Much like the rest of the film there is great subtle information conveyed in this scene. If viewed on DVD you will find excellent sound fidelity and very sharp video resolution.

SOCIAL STATEMENTS

The most critical point this film explores is how social expectations and the roles people play in life come to interact with who they are as individuals. In other words it is not who you are as a person is not necessarily what you are as in your profession or calling in life. The script goes to show us that both sides of this "who and what" equation are impacted by adjustments made on either end. For example, with the case of Father Logan, you do get a sense that somehow a combination of the war and time spent away from Ruth changed who he was from a man that shared all of his life's dreams, fears, fantasies, etc...with Ruth to a more introverted and spiritual person that may have been looking to either hide from having to deal with a romantic relationship or may have become truly enlightened with a desire to do the work of God. As in real life these sorts of things are never made perfectly clear in the film.

The film also manages to never make a hero out of any one character since everyone simply adheres to their position in life. Logan keeps his mouth shut, Ruth avoids scandal when it comes to her marriage, and Larrue just wants to make an arrest. The great tragedy of the film is how Logan and Ruth had a missed opportunity of love that will never be again. Considering it was 1950s America in an era when McCarthysim was thriving this is the best that the director and producers could do for us. The religious leader had to be shown to be of good morals and unyielding ethics while the wife had to stay faithful to her marriage. Stories about crooked police officers really did not take off until Serpico (1973) so you knew Larrue was not on the take from the get go. In the original script Father Logan is wrongfully convicted of the crime and hanged at the end. In a way I would say the censorship board was good for something since they ruled out that ending; it would have been too depressing.

Something I thought worth mentioning was the subtle anti-German propaganda at play in this film. Otto Keller, the killer, is played by screen veteran O.E. Hasse and is as German as one can get when it comes to speaking English with a heavy accent and looking very ethnic. Keller's motivation for the murder is made to be a noble one in that he does not wish for his wife Alma to spend the rest of her life using her "beautiful hands" to perform manual labor. By killing, Keller reasons he will find a way for his wife to live a more comfortable life. Otto is very cut throat and heartless when it comes to having an innocent man, Logan, potentially pay for his crime but his wife Alma is unsure of the whole thing and is tormented by a great sense of guilt over the situation. These characters could have been made out to be a different nationality if they absolutely needed to portray the poor servant class as immigrants; otherwise they would have been better cast as Canadians from the servant class. The actions to Otto Keller mainly serve to vilify the German males and stereotype them as an inherently evil people while their women are not so bad since they do know there is a line that should not be crossed. World War 2 was still a very recent event in 1953 so this was not a big deal back then but looking back on it now it does insult the viewer's intelligence.

OVERALL

I would say this film is a must see it you enjoy a powerful story, great acting, and the Hitchcock style of suspense. The film does start off a bit slow even after they open with a shot of the dead man's body in his residence but once the investigation is up and running you find yourself riveted to your seat. The DVD version has a wonderful extra feature that runs approximately 20 minutes and has some famous name film historians such as Turner Classic Movies' Robert Osborne and actor/director Peter Bogdanovich discuss the film and share trivia with us. Bogdanovich tells a fascinating story of a screening of this film in the mid 1960s that both he and Montgomery Clift attended. As you may already know, this would place the time of this screening after Clift's near fatal automobile accident in 1956 when his face was disfigured and his addition to alcohol/drugs took over his life. Bogdanovich quotes Clift as saying it is "Hard" to watch himself on the screen back in 1953 when he was younger and life had not dealt him such a bad hand. Trust me when I say you will enjoy this bonus feature film. Unfortunately this film is not given even a fraction of the recognition it deserves but perhaps it will influence you to seek out more forgotten gems after you view it. It has already convinced me to take a trip to Quebec City just to see all of the hauntingly beautiful architecture.