■ In Catholicism, there is an act called confession, in which the Baptist confesses his sins and obtains God's forgivenes. This form of confession, in which the baptist is heard in the confessional by a hearing priest, God's representative, is called auricular confession, and has been institutionalized since the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, when Innocent III, a pontiff of immense power, established it ( Until then, there had been public confessions and so on ).
■ One night, the protagonist of this film, Logan ( Montgomery Clift ), a priest, hears a confession of robbery and murder from Keller, who works as a church servant ( 1 ). Keller knows that the priest cannot divulge the contents of the confession and tries to pin the crime on him ( he was already wearing the priest's robes when he killed Villette in preparation for his eyewitness testimony ). In other words, from the very beginning of the story, the film foretells that Logan, because of his confidentiality, will be drawn into the complicity with Keller, or rather, into the fate where he will have to bear the guilt of Keller's murder.
■ So far, Logan is a priest who is enduring the guilt of Keller's trickery. However, the fact that he was meeting with Grandfort ( Anne Baxter ), now the wife of a congressman but once his lover, on the night of the murder, in addition to the fact that she had told him that she had been threatened by the lawyer Villette, the police identifies Logan as a suspect.
■ Ironically, in the background of Logan's being considered a suspect, Grandfort's testimony of trying to save him was seen by the police as a sufficient motive for Logan to kill Villette. A series of testimonies, such as the fact that Logan and Grandfort were once lovers, that upon his return from the war, Grandfort hid the fact that she was already married and reunited with him, that Villette saw this, and that she then became threatened by him, were considered by the police as sufficient motive for Logan's crime, i.e., to kill Villette. This series of testimonies, in turn, leads the police to believe that Logan's motive for committing the crime was to protect Grandfort's status and appearance as a married woman.
■ Many audience may look at this process and think that the police are mistaken and that this misunderstanding will be cleared up later anyway. But are the police really wrong? Logan himself does not deny that he wanted to kill Villette. To be more precise, in the very act of silence to protect Keller due to the priest's obligation of confidentiality, His hidden desire to kill Villette is mixed in. In the usual view, we might sympathize with Logan, who is torn between his duty of confidentiality as a priest and the confession of the true culprit, but behind such a dimension of ethical justice, he is unable to confess, even though he knows that his desire to kill Villette is swirling around him.
■ Keller's motive for killing Villette was the desire for money, but his intention to pin the crime on his benefactor Logan in his murderous scheme is the embodiment of the "transference" that traces the crime back to Keller's actions and then back to its origin, namely, Logan's desire to kill Villette. Of course, this is not to say that Keller was exonerated of his crime, but in the psychoanalytic viewpoint that Villette's death transfers "culpability" to Logan's desire to kill (as identified by the police), as well as Keller's.
■ In the extreme, Keller has become Surrogate murderer, doing away with Villette for Logan. François Truffaut refers to this as the form of "exchange murder" found in Hitchcock's films.
■ The following is scene ( 2~5 ) in which Grandfort, appearing as a witness, is questioned by Prosecutor Robertson that you liked Logan so much that you even saw him after you were married. The reason is that you like each other so much that it is quite conceivable that Logan would kill to protect you. This scene ( 5 ) is one highlight, and the close-up of Grandfort confessing her feelings clearly makes this film as close to melodramatic as possible.
■ Many are content with such a view and are deceived by Hitchcock. This is because, looking only at the scene here, we see Granfort favorably that she boldly confessed her love for Logan, despite the fact that her husband was also present. However, in the scene after this, the moment Logan's acquittal is confirmed at the trial, she does not even run up to him, but says to her husband, "Let's go home," and leaves from there.
■ The implication of this is that Granfort's confession was not true love, and that it was only because she was afraid that if Logan was found guilty, she would be involved as a result ( accused of having an affai r) and lose her current position as the wife of a congressman. As a result, she, like Logan, has not confessed the truth.
■ And so, the question arises as to whether anyone will confess the truth, but the situation is changed by Otto's wife, Alma ( Dolly Haas ), who is distressed by Logan's stubborn refusal to speak out about Otto's crimes ( 6~7 ).
■ Alma ( 8 ) turns a cold eye on her husband ( 9 ), who seems to consider it only natural that Logan should be protecting him.
■ A crowd waits outside the courthouse for Logan, who has been acquitted ( 10 ). Logan is abused for a murderer by the crowd ( 11 ). Alma is upset to see such a situation ( 12 ). She goes up to Logan and appeals his innocence to the crowd ( 13 ).
■ Keller is surprised by Alma's behavior ( 14 ). Alma names her husband as the real culprit ( 15 ). Keller shoots Alma to death with a gun he has prepared in advance ( 16~17 ).
■ After this, Keller is shot dead by the police after he escapes and admits his guilt ( 18 ). How should we interpret this outcome? Here, we should consider the title of the film, "I Confess". Keller, Alma, and those who confessed their desire to reveal the truth are "dead", while those who told the fact but did not confess their desires Grandfort ( sexual desire for Logan, self-preservation to save their own lives ), and Logan, who stubbornly did not tell anything, "survived".
■ This indicates that just because the content of the confession is withheld by the priest's confidentiality does not mean that the confession itself leads to immediately divine forgiveness. Then "Punishment" is lacking. When a person internalizes one's own spontaneous acts through "Punishment" and comes to recognize them as "Sin", then a subordinate "Religious Subject" is born. In the case of Keller and Alma, the punishment was "Death".
■ However, there are those who secretly realize that their "Evil Desire" is already "Sin". These are Logan, who had desire to murder, and Grandfort, who was caught up in self-preservation and sexual lust. Even though they have not committed a criminal act, they are working their "evil intelligence" to hide their desires, which are obvious that if they confess, they will be beaten by the public. It is also "Sin" to cover up one's "Evil Desire" by covering them with pseudo-ethical righteousness that seeks to protect someone else. In this sense, if we do not recognize that the title "I Confess" ironically expresses Logan's and Granfort's position of "culpability" by not confessing the truth to the end ( "I do not confess" ), this film will only seem boring.
