Midnight Oil:Movies and More

“I Confess” (1953) with Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, and Karl Malden makes for a rather melodramatic situation where the real murderer uses the silence of the confessional as the perfect cover-up for his crime. Alfred Hitchcock’s direction on site in Quebec City gives this film a bit of a different perspective. Once you realize that the setting is supposed to be Quebec City during the 1950’s in the pre-Vatican II Duplessis era, it all starts to make a little more sense – the film, that is, not the murder mystery plot. The murder, cover-up, romance, blackmail and dénouement are all very predictable. What else can we expect when two excruciatingly beautiful people such as Anne Baxter and Montgomery Clift are caught up in a thoroughly impossible situation? It is all completely incomprehensible and implausible in today’s world until you remember that this is supposed to be Quebec in the 1950’s. The prominent landmarks and buildings seen in the film are still there today. (Our family visits quite regularly.) The social and religious landscapes that make this film believable are not. C’est quoi encore le dicton en anglais? “Much Ado About Nothing”?

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See the film trailer for "I Confess" (1953).