I Confess

One of Hitchcock’s less appreciated films, I Confess begins with a murder in Quebec City followed by a gloriously expressionistic sequence as a figure flees from the crime scene through a maze of dark alleys shot at Dutch angles. The figure is German immigrant and church caretaker Otto Keller (O.E. Hasse), who moments later encounters his employer, Father Mike Logan (Montgomery Clift), and urgently requests the sacrament of confession, during which he informs the priest that he has just murdered a shady attorney named Villette (Ovila Légaré0). Bound by the secrecy of the confessional from reporting the crime, Logan is soon pulled into the police investigation, first as a witness but later as a suspect based on circumstantial evidence. Meanwhile, Otto is all too willing to let Logan burn even as his wife Alma (Dolly Haas) feels increasingly guilty. Complicating matters further is the fact that Logan’s best hope for an alibi is Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter), the wife of a Quebec legislator who has been in love with Logan since childhood and even cheated on her husband with him days before Logan entered the seminary, as narrated through flashbacks. Some may find the film lacking in typical Hitchcockian suspense but the story is powerfully told, the cast is excellent, and the camera occasionally produces a stunner of a shot, for example when Ruth can be seen dialing the phone while her face and upper body are concealed behind the back of a chair.