I Confess

This film along with his The Wrong Man surely rank among Alfred Hitchcock's most underrated, somber, and personal films. This is his most overtly religious film in that it deals with a priest who overhears the confession of a murderer and soon finds himself accused of the murder. As a priest he is sworn not to reveal things told in confession, but he risks wrongly going to jail. It's Hitchcock's favorite theme of an innocent man wrongly accused, but it is now made into a crisis of faith and a test of moral character. Montgomery Clift plays the priest, Father Logan, with the kind of somber passion that only Clift could bring. He's excellent. Robert Burks' photography is appropriately unsettling. If the middle-half of the film didn't get bogged down in a flashback with a romantic sub-plot, I would be willing to rank this among his very finest films. As it is, however, I see the wounded soul of an artist (or two) grappling with his own personal fears in the way that only Hitchcock could do it. Like with The Wrong Man, this is only a step away from being a masterpiece.