I CONFESS (Alfred Hitchcock, 1953)

Indoors, a standing bicycle collapses, elucidating the theme: the maintenance of balance; anxiety over its loss. What balance? Of good and evil in us? More so: between competing obligations, desires, the imaginary and the real.
     Based on an updated old play by Paul Anthelme, Alfred Hitchcock’s tremendously moving I Confess begins with documentary shots of Quebec streets and buildings before the camera enters through an open window onto fiction: a corpse, the victim of murder-theft. The culprit, dressed like a priest, flees at night to the sanctuary of the church where he works, prays, confesses his crime to Father Michael Logan, who subsequently cannot disclose the killer’s identity, even to defend himself, even to avoid the death penalty, because he is duty-bound to maintain the sanctity of the Confessional. “We’re free,” Ruth Grandfort tells Logan. A police detective overhears this; but what does it mean? The deceased had been blackmailing Ruth, who is married to a politician, over an imagined adulterous affair between her and Logan. The townsfolk, now a mob, eventually turn on Logan, whose façade of fortitude is a kind of stage performance verging on martyrdom. “The wrong man” feels guilty. Montgomery Clift is brilliant as Father Logan.
     O. E. Hasse beautifully plays the German immigrant whose tender feelings for his hardworking wife prompt his committing murder-theft. Shot by police, expiring, Keller stretches out his hand to Logan, asking for forgiveness—of whom? A fellow human, to unburden his own conscience, or his priest, for absolution?
     When the reason for Logan’s silence is revealed, Ruth is instantly purged of guilt on several grounds, including that Logan’s love for her may have driven him to commit murder. He doesn’t love her, she finally realizes; he loves God. “Let’s go home,” she tells her spouse.

Tags: Hitchcock