There is no real consensus on Hitchcock's I Confess. Often seen as one of his lessor films, there are cults of appreciation of this moody, melodramatic film. I was first introduced to it through the film Le Confessional, Robert Lepage's gorgeous family drama centered around the making of this film. While the film might be a difficult one to really embrace like some of his greater crowd-pleasers, there is a great deal I appreciate about it.
I love the way Hitchcock plays with the intersections of faith and the secular world, the ways differing priorities intersect. I find the director's use of melodramatic elements to speak to this quite effectively, creating the right mood and emotional punch the story needs. Sure the film has a constructed feel to it. But for me that works in dissecting the structures we've put in place to define ourselves and our world.
In many ways I Confess is full of the lush, pulpy, elements which make a story delicious, like a guilty pleasure. Forbidden love, murder, blackmail. It's all there. Are we, as the audience, to confess our desire for such a story? Setting the story in the (at the time) very Catholic Quebec City, and centering it around a priest wrestling with his desire, it is a dramatic exploration of guilt and shame, all wrapped up in a thriller. The exciting ending chase and shootings all ends in a request for forgiveness, an act of contrition. Through the story Hitchcock offers us forgiveness.
the film drags a bit in the middle and yes it is very predictable, but for me, I Confess works in how it confronts us with our own devils, our own shame. We seek out in stories, in media, the kinds of violence we don't want in real life. Movie can be cathartic for our fears, our darker desires. Hitchcock perhaps understands this better than many of his contemporaries at the time, and he's helping us through that.
I Confess
Starring: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: George Tabori, William Archibald
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