I CONFESS
It is a far too common occurrence on television police programs these days for a killer to have confessed his crime to a priest, for the police to become vaguely aware of this sacred confession, and for those same police to harass the priest into giving up what he knows, only to be met with an unrelenting resistance from the man with the upturned collar. It's an annoying pretext for a television show, pandering as it does to the alleged impulse among nubile hotties to seduce a man of the cloth. Most of this does not take place during I Confess. However, the sanctity of the confessional is just about all the starting off point the Dick Wolfs and Stephen J. Cannells and Jerry Thorpes of the TV world care to utilize and so we get the same old story watered down with minutia a little bit more every time it's recycled.
Not so with Hitchcock. Here the story goes that the one and only Montgomery Cliff is a priest to whom a German killer and housekeeper at the church confesses that he murdered a nasty lawyer fellow whose home he had been in the process of burglarizing. Priest Logan duly keeps the secret in his well-cloaked bosom and refuses to divulge what he knows, even when doing so would serve to alleviate the struggles of ex-girlfriend Ruth Grandfort, played here with some panache by Anne Baxter.
The unraveling of Ruth's struggle and sorrow is the key element of Hitchcock's genius as a storyteller and this is one of the most vital clues, as it were, as to why his films are so vastly superior to the television programs whose "creators" so sloppily rip him off. Not only does Police Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden) not understand why any of this concerns Ruth, little time passes before we in the audience scratch our own heads wondering the same thing. Hitchcock takes his time--and ours--getting ready to reveal and unravel those details. Meanwhile, Priest Logan goes on trial for the murder. The verdict is a very close call. The twelve good men believe he committed the crime, but admit that the prosecution failed to make its case. Father Logan is released, much to the chagrin of the trial judge.
Even though the above incidents occupy the first sixty-odd minutes of the movie, Hitchcock is just warming up. Otto, the real killer, in a battle with his own conscience and his own terror, believes the priest will now spill his guts. He behaves accordingly.
What really needs to be understood here is that Montgomery Cliff--even in the clothes of his character's profession--simply steals every scene in which he appears. He does not hog the scenes or upstage the other actors. On the contrary, he is vastly generous. Still, he walks into a frame of the camera bearing a countenance of internal agony, greets the other characters with civility, and walks out of the scene with that scene in his pocket.
The brooding style that Cliff popularized may or may not have had anything to do with his personal life, but in his case (far more so than with Brando or Dean) there is at least some cause for speculation. Montgomery Cliff's last heterosexual relationship was with a bisexual woman. After that ended around 1950, he was exclusively gay, a not well kept secret which estranged him from his dad. Studio publicity hacks weren't especially adept at dealing with such matters in that period and so they simply lied and had him involved with all sorts of leading ladies, a dishonesty which led the young man to get involved with prescription pills and eventually alcohol. In 1957, he wrecked his car while leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's house, ruining much of the left side of his face. Even though he had plastic surgery to repair himself, the studios began filming his right profile to maintain the handsome image his fans apparently craved.
Even though much of what I just wrote happened after the making of I Confess, I think it's still relevant because there are some folks out there for whom acting in movies provides a kind of catharsis they need to experience vicariously through their other selves. If that's really the case here, it might explain Monty Cliff's unending appeal. It also provides a little irony since he is playing a man whom no woman care have.
It certainly works as an explanation for why he's so amazing in this movie. Malden is fine, sounding almost exactly the way he did in all his other films. Baxter never did better work than what she did here. And even though Cliff's performance may not be quite what it was in Red River, A Place in the Sun, or From Here to Eternity, it was more than good enough to immortalize this movie as one of Hitchcock's five best.
It is a far too common occurrence on television police programs these days for a killer to have confessed his crime to a priest, for the police to become vaguely aware of this sacred confession, and for those same police to harass the priest into giving up what he knows, only to be met with an unrelenting resistance from the man with the upturned collar. It's an annoying pretext for a television show, pandering as it does to the alleged impulse among nubile hotties to seduce a man of the cloth. Most of this does not take place during I Confess. However, the sanctity of the confessional is just about all the starting off point the Dick Wolfs and Stephen J. Cannells and Jerry Thorpes of the TV world care to utilize and so we get the same old story watered down with minutia a little bit more every time it's recycled.
Not so with Hitchcock. Here the story goes that the one and only Montgomery Cliff is a priest to whom a German killer and housekeeper at the church confesses that he murdered a nasty lawyer fellow whose home he had been in the process of burglarizing. Priest Logan duly keeps the secret in his well-cloaked bosom and refuses to divulge what he knows, even when doing so would serve to alleviate the struggles of ex-girlfriend Ruth Grandfort, played here with some panache by Anne Baxter.
The unraveling of Ruth's struggle and sorrow is the key element of Hitchcock's genius as a storyteller and this is one of the most vital clues, as it were, as to why his films are so vastly superior to the television programs whose "creators" so sloppily rip him off. Not only does Police Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden) not understand why any of this concerns Ruth, little time passes before we in the audience scratch our own heads wondering the same thing. Hitchcock takes his time--and ours--getting ready to reveal and unravel those details. Meanwhile, Priest Logan goes on trial for the murder. The verdict is a very close call. The twelve good men believe he committed the crime, but admit that the prosecution failed to make its case. Father Logan is released, much to the chagrin of the trial judge.
Even though the above incidents occupy the first sixty-odd minutes of the movie, Hitchcock is just warming up. Otto, the real killer, in a battle with his own conscience and his own terror, believes the priest will now spill his guts. He behaves accordingly.
What really needs to be understood here is that Montgomery Cliff--even in the clothes of his character's profession--simply steals every scene in which he appears. He does not hog the scenes or upstage the other actors. On the contrary, he is vastly generous. Still, he walks into a frame of the camera bearing a countenance of internal agony, greets the other characters with civility, and walks out of the scene with that scene in his pocket.
The brooding style that Cliff popularized may or may not have had anything to do with his personal life, but in his case (far more so than with Brando or Dean) there is at least some cause for speculation. Montgomery Cliff's last heterosexual relationship was with a bisexual woman. After that ended around 1950, he was exclusively gay, a not well kept secret which estranged him from his dad. Studio publicity hacks weren't especially adept at dealing with such matters in that period and so they simply lied and had him involved with all sorts of leading ladies, a dishonesty which led the young man to get involved with prescription pills and eventually alcohol. In 1957, he wrecked his car while leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's house, ruining much of the left side of his face. Even though he had plastic surgery to repair himself, the studios began filming his right profile to maintain the handsome image his fans apparently craved.
Even though much of what I just wrote happened after the making of I Confess, I think it's still relevant because there are some folks out there for whom acting in movies provides a kind of catharsis they need to experience vicariously through their other selves. If that's really the case here, it might explain Monty Cliff's unending appeal. It also provides a little irony since he is playing a man whom no woman care have.
It certainly works as an explanation for why he's so amazing in this movie. Malden is fine, sounding almost exactly the way he did in all his other films. Baxter never did better work than what she did here. And even though Cliff's performance may not be quite what it was in Red River, A Place in the Sun, or From Here to Eternity, it was more than good enough to immortalize this movie as one of Hitchcock's five best.
