It’s pretty well-known among my friends and acquaintances that I’m a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, so assigning me a Hitchcock film I hadn’t seen was a kind of a gimme. This, I believe, was one of two American Hitchcock films I hadn’t seen (now the only remaining American one is The Paradine Case, but I have basically everything pre-1934 to catch up on). While I Confess isn’t usually considered top-drawer Hitchcock, I still expected to enjoy it, and I did.
Montgomery Clift is a priest who hears the confession of a murderer, but confession is sacred and even when he himself is implicated in the murder, he cannot reveal the truth to save himself. It’s not really a MacGuffin, but is pretty straightforward – Hitchcock is sincere here, which I enjoyed.
