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Film History (2007) - Constructing a Priest, Silencing a Saint: The PCA and "I Confess" (1953)

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Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess was based on Paul Anthelme's 1902 play Nos Deux Consciences. Hitchcock began working on the film in 1947 but had great difficulty in fashioning a script which met both his requirements and those of various other interested parties, including the Production Code Administration and the Roman Catholic Church. The paper traces the compromised development of the project through to its location filming in Quebec in 1952, and suggests that problems with the film cited by Robin Wood and others can be traced to this troubled development process.

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Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess was based on Paul Anthelme's 1902 play Nos Deux Consciences. Hitchcock began working on the film in 1947 but had great difficulty in fashioning a script which met both his requirements and those of various other interested parties, including the Production Code Administration and the Roman Catholic Church. The paper traces the compromised development of the project through to its location filming in Quebec in 1952, and suggests that problems with the film cited by Robin Wood and others can be traced to this troubled development process.

Cinematic representations of religious figures have always risked raising the ire of audiences. When Alfred Hitchcock proposed making a film about a priest suspected of murder, hardly anyone thought the project was a good idea. As early as October 1947, Lee Wright of Simon & Schuster's 'Inner Sanctum Mysteries' wrote to Katherine Brown at MCA, regarding a proposed tie-in with the film. Wright wrote, 'There's no doubt that the basic idea ... is a very interesting one. I'm afraid though that in myopinion it has been worked out very badly'.1 Brown agreed. 'Please don't tell Hitch, as it's none of my business, but I thought the story frighteningly bad, and I hope he makes enormous changes before he does it as a picture'.2 By the time the film I Confess began shooting at the end of August, 1952, the story had been revised numerous times as the producers struggled to address fundamental problems with the concept.3

The kernel around which the film is built is the main character's refusal to speak. Framed for murder by a killer who has confessed to him in the first few minutes of the film, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) refuses to violate the secrecy of the confessional even after he is accused of adultery and the murder of his married lover's blackmailer. Arrested and put on trial for his life, his best defense is a meager 'I can't say'. Everymajor character in the film tries to provoke a response from Father Logan only to be exasperated by his silence. Critics have been equally frustrated, seldom discussing the film except to express a fundamental dissatisfaction. The most generous, Robin Wood, declares the film to be 'earnest, distinguished, very interesting, and on the whole a failure'.4

Because the character's motivation is as opaque to the audience as it is to the other characters in the film, the central mystery around which the film is constructed remains unresolved. The implied answer to the question of why he will not speak even to save his own life is simply 'Because he is a priest'. This response, however, raises more questions than it answers. Why does it mean so much to Logan to be a priest? Why did he become a priest in the first place? How does he feel about the situation in which now he finds himself?

While Logan's silence has often been attributed to the strictures of his vocation, the film's production history reveals other reasons why the character's thoughts remain unspoken. In addition to an intractable story problem that seems to mandate the main character's passivity, the filmmakers found themselves dealing with an unusual degree of preproduction scrutiny. Objections to I Confess came from a variety of sources, including religious officials, publishers, and members of the public. As a consequence, every aspect of the project was subjected to a series of negotiations long before production began.5 Ironically, however, these attempts to eliminate potentially offensive material had the unintended result of suppressing anything that might convey a sense of the character's spiritual life.

'A priest has just murdered a man'

In September of 1947 Louis Verneuil presented Alfred Hitchcock with a screen treatment, labeled an 'original story'.6 Six months later (20 March 1948) a new treatment appeared, credited to Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville.7 The first sentence is blunt and brilliant: 'A Priest has just murdered a man'. There are 'signs indicat[ing] that the Priest was caught as he committed a robbery'. He 'grabs bundles of notes and stuffs them into a pocket inside his cassock', then uses the corner of his cassock to wipe his fingerprints off the murder weapon.

From the first sentence, one can anticipate the controversy the project might provoke. As soon as word got out, there was a negative response from the public. The first complaint, lodged four years before the film was shot, came from a man named John Schuyler in November, 1948. Schuyler wrote directly to Hitchcock, with some heat, that he had heard 'that a certain Radio Gossip Columnist...made the statement that your firm is contemplating the production of a Moving Picture, in which one of the characters is a Roman Catholic Priest who becomes a murderer ... It is inconceivable that a responsible organization such as yours would so far exceed the bounds of taste and decency as to produce such a Picture'.8

Hitchcock himself responded with a telegram:

Dear Mr. Schuyler Quote I Confess Unquote is a story about a priest who hea...

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