I Confess is a 1953 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It stars Montgomery Clift as Fr. Michael William Logan, a Catholic priest, Anne Baxter as Ruth Grandfort, and Karl Malden as Inspector Larrue. This was the only film Hitchcock made with these three actors. Biographers say he had trouble with "method" actors such as Clift and Paul Newman, who worked with Hitchcock in Torn Curtain. In the book-length interview Hitchcock/Truffaut (1967), Hitchcock said he had hired Anita Bjork as the female lead, after seeing her in Miss Julie (1951). However, when Bjork arrived with her lover and their baby, Warner Bros. insisted Hitchcock find another actress.
The film is based on a 1902 French play by Paul Anthelme called Nos Deux Consciences, a play Hitchcock saw in the 1930s. The screenplay was written by George Tabori.
The movie was largely filmed on location in Québec City, Canada, with numerous shots of the city landscape and interiors of its churches and other emblematic buildings, such as the Château Frontenac.
Plot
Montgomery Clift in the I Confess film trailer
Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) is a devout Catholic priest in a church in Québec City. To take care of the church and the rectory, Father Logan employes a caretaker, Otto Keller (O. E. Hasse), and a housekeeper, Otto's wife Alma (Dolly Haas), who are German immigrants with very little money, although in their homeland they were more affluent. Otto Keller also works part-time as a gardener for a few householders in Québec City.
Very late one evening Keller asks if Father Logan will hear his confession. In the confessional, Keller confesses that he went to try to steal money from a person he gardens for, a rich lawyer called Villette, and in the process he killed him. Because of the binding nature of the secrecy of the confessional, Father Logan cannot tell the police anything he now knows about this crime.
At the time of the murder, two young girls saw someone leaving the house of the murdered man wearing a cassock. While this was just Otto's disguise, suspicion falls upon Father Logan himself (who can provide no alibi for the time of the murder, cannot talk about the confession he heard, and cannot name the true murderer), since it gradually becomes apparent that Logan, in his early life before he became a priest, had a girlfriend, Ruth (Anne Baxter), who has always loved him and still does, even though she is now married to someone else.
In flashbacks it is shown that Logan stopped writing to Ruth not long after he went off to war. After he came back, Ruth and Logan ended up stranded on an island during a storm, and were forced to shelter for the night in a gazebo. In the morning Villette finds them there, makes offensive comments about Ruth, and is punched by Logan. It turns out that Ruth had married a prominent politician without ever telling Logan, who leaves her and does not see her for years. But Ruth has been blackmailed by Villette, as both she and her husband's lives would be ruined if her post-marital relation with Logan were made public, and so she meets him on the night of the murder to ask for advice.
Anne Baxter in the I Confess trailer
Villette's death is a relief to Ruth, and she tells the police about her meeting with Father Logan to provide him an alibi. In fact the police assumes that Father Logan killed the blackmailer Villette to protect Ruth and himself, and that there is an on-going scandalous relationship between the two of them. The situation is made worse by Otto Keller, who lies extensively to the police in order to try to ensure that he is safe from suspicion while Father Logan is convicted for murder.
Father Logan comes very close to being found guilty and executed for a crime he did not commit, a sort of martyrdom. At the end of his trial, he is just barely found "not guilty", but his reputation as a priest is ruined, and the people of Québec City gathered on the courthouse steps revile him. Otto's wife cannot bear to see this, and starts to shout that it was her husband that killed the man, but Otto pulls out a gun and shoots his wife, to silence her.
Running away, Otto is cornered by the police in the grand ballroom of the Château Frontenac. The detective who investigated the story, unable to elicit any comment from Father Logan, suspects that Otto is really Villette's murderer, and asks him so. Otto assumes Father Logan broke the secret of his confession, declares his guilt, and tries to shoot Father Logan, who bravely attempted to approach him and reason with him. Instead, Otto himself is fatally wounded by a police sharpshooter. In extremis Otto calls out to Father Logan to forgive him, and receives absolution.
Subtle visual references to Christ, the cross, and the crucifix, occur frequently throughout the movie. The soundtrack uses the melody from the Gregorian ChantDies Irae throughout.
Alfred Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In I Confess he can be seen (right after the credits) walking along the sidewalk at the top of a steep stairway.
The film was banned in Ireland because it showed a priest having a relationship with a woman (even though, in the movie, the relationship takes place before the character becomes a priest).[1]
