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I
CONFESS
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I
Confess (1953) is not one of Hitchcock's favorite movies. He felt the
film lacked in humor and wondered whether it could be related to his Catholic
upbringing...
The iconography of Catholicism
is constantly present in Hitchcock's films. In I Confess, a story about
a Catholic priest, played by Montgomery
Clift, the symbolism does not need to hide. |
In I Confess (1953), Otto
Keller, a caretaker at a Catholic church in Quebec, confesses to Father
Michael Logan that he has killed a man.
The police suspect Father
Logan, who cannot reveal what he has been told in confession.
Father Logan is put
on trial. Though acquitted,
suspicions about his guilt
remain...
Eventually, Keller's
wife Alma --for whom he stole and murdered-- points to the guilt of her
husband...
... whereupon Keller shoots
and kills her.
Father Logan is freed.
Click
on the image for a clip on Youtube ( ).
Vertigo, The Birds,
and I Confess are three movies that belong together inasmuch as they all
create a new universe in which the boundaries between guilt and innocence
are vague, shifting and ambiguous. Indeed, the ambiguity of guilt, the
transference of guilt, the universality of guilt, and the painful cleansing
ritual the liminal personae are involved with constitute the central themes
of these films. The three films are quintessential Hitchcock. But, occasionally,
Hitchcock's universe contains elements that are totally different.
Mathieu
Deflem
DeflemM@yahoo.com
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.This
page is part of Hitchcockonline.org.
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