VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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                                                                                                      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. ​​
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links