With his portly profile, deadpan delivery and conservative suits, the filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was an instantly recognizable figure, but he remained unknowable to practically everyone – with the possible exception of his ever patient and devoted wife, Alma.
Hitchcock liked to shock or amuse in person as well as in his movies. Edward White, author of “The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock,” writes about two priests visiting Hitchcock when he was old, frail and in ill health, a time when other men might feel vulnerable and open. Not Hitchcock. They woke him up and the first clergyman, who knew the director, introduced the second as “a young priest from Cleveland.”
“Looking up,” White records, “a sleepy Hitchcock replied, ‘Cleveland? Disgraceful!’”
How serious Hitchcock was about his own faith, White observes, is a mystery. Regardless, one of his lesser-known films is of particular interest to Catholics.
“I Confess,” from 1953, tells the story of Father Logan (Montgomery Clift) who hears the confession of a murderer. He refuses to break the seal of the sacrament, even when he himself is accused of committing the man’s crime.
Hitchcock began as a silent film director, and he maintained that, essentially, he remained one throughout his long career, concerned primarily with creating strong visuals. Consider, for example, Cary Grant being chased by a crop duster in “North by Northwest,” the botched murder attempt on Grace Kelly in “Dial M for Murder,” and of course the “Psycho” shower scene.
“I Confess” begins with haunting images: a dead body, a shadowy figure making his way through the city streets in the middle of night, and then Father Logan at a rectory window seeing the man enter his church. The priest goes in the dark church, picks up a votive candle and finds the man kneeling in a back pew. The trembling man, his face illuminated by the candle, says simply, “I came to pray.”
Midway through the film, after Father Logan learns he is about to be accused of another man’s crime, he walks through the city. He stops at a store window to look at a man’s suit on display, obviously imagining his life would be simpler if he was not wearing the Roman collar that prevents him from naming the real killer.
A more evocative image is an overhead shot as the priest walks past a cemetery and a statue of Jesus, flanked by two Roman soldiers, on the way to his Crucifixion. Unlike previous images that focused clearly on Father Logan, in this case, Christ and his Cross loom in the foreground, and the priest is merely an indistinguishable figure deep in the background. With the priest’s identity obscured, the scene is a reminder that all Christians are obliged, at some point, to carry a cross. Eventually, everyone is treated unfairly, blamed for someone else’s mistakes, called to make sacrifices that are never acknowledged and, ultimately, asked to forgive those who have hurt them.
“I Confess” is a story with more than one confession. Other important characters in the film are Ruth Grandfort and her husband, Pierre. When she learns that Father Logan is the prime suspect for the murder of a man named Villette, Ruth tells her husband what he already suspects. She is still in love with Father Logan, who she was romantically involved with before he became a priest.
She tells her husband that she has to tell the police that Father Logan was with her the night Villette was murdered. Villette had been blackmailing her – another blow to her husband – and she had reached out to the priest for guidance.
Pierre is understandably hurt by everything he has heard, but he accompanies Ruth to the police station, and he listens silently as Inspector Larrue (Karl Malden) relentlessly questions his wife about her feelings for the priest and why she was being blackmailed.
Despite the information Ruth gives the police, Father Logan is put on trial. The climax of the film includes an angry crowd on the street taunting the falsely accused priest, gunfire and the real killer being tricked into revealing himself.
In the final scene, Father Logan is with the dying killer, who is once again asking for forgiveness.
But the film includes another, more subtle, image of reconciliation.
Once Father Logan’s innocence is established, Ruth turns to her wounded but faithful husband, and says, “Pierre, take me home.”
As they turn to leave, he puts his arm around her.
Carl Peters is former managing editor of the Catholic Star Herald. His columns can be read at catholicstarherald.org/author/carl.
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