Alfred Hitchcock knew a thing or two about complicated thrillers.
Having a murderer confess to a priest -- who couldn't betray this trust -- was already a familiar plot twist by 1953, when Hitchcock released I Confess. Because of the seal of confession, noble priest Father Logan (Montgomery Clift) couldn't even clear his own name when police suspected that he was the killer.
Good prevails in the end. Shot by police, killer Otto Keller (O.E. Hasse) makes an urgent final confession to the priest.
"It's natural for a Catholic filmmaker like Hitchcock to see the dramatic potential of confession, with its combination of mystery and holiness," said film critic Steven Greydanus, best known for his work for the National Catholic Register. "At the same time, Hitchcock thought I Confess was a mistake, because he thought that his mostly Protestant audience in America just wouldn't get it."
The sacrament of confession is sacred and secret -- facts known to Medieval playwrights and modern filmmakers. Thus, putting a confession rite on a movie screen is a "transgressive act" of the highest kind, said Greydanus, who serves as a permanent deacon in the Diocese of Newark, N.J. (Deacons do not hear confessions.)
"Voyeurism is an important theme in much of Hitchcock's work, and he knew that using confession in this way was a kind of voyeurism. ... He knew this was a kind of taboo."
Nevertheless, Hollywood scribes have frequently used confession and penance for everything from cheap laughs (A League of Their Own) and shattering guilt (The Godfather: Part III) to near-miraculous transformations (The Mission). In a recent 6,000-word essay -- "In Search of True Confession in the Movies" -- Greydanus covered a century of cinema, while admitting that he had to omit dozens of movies that included confession scenes.
The key is that filmmakers struggle to capture, in words and images, what is happening in a person's heart. The act of confession opens a window into the soul, since characters are forced to put their sins and struggles into words.
"Perhaps the very secrecy surrounding the sacrament of confession was part of what attracted filmmakers to depict it," Greydanus wrote. "Anyone can witness the Eucharistic liturgy, an ordination or a wedding. ... But what transpires in confession can only be imagined -- which is the cinema's stock in trade.
"Often enough, confession scenes have served in movies as a pretext to allow a character to articulate their spiritual or temporal struggles, whether or not any kind of sin is involved."
Onscreen confessions frequently show dramatic plot twists and stunning statements -- such as a pronouncement by a man (Chris O'Dowd) in the 2014 drama Calvary -- that he will kill a brave, faithful Irish priest. Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) doesn't report this death threat to police, of course, because it occurred during confession.
The rarest of onscreen confessions, Greydanus noted, is actually the most common form of the sacrament: believers confessing ordinary sins as they struggle to follow their faith at work, in their homes and in their private lives.
There are a few glimpses of ordinary confession, as in the 1987 comedy classic Moonstruck. In one scene, confused character Loretta (Cher) confesses, between lesser offenses, "Once I slept with the brother of my fiance." In the final scene, family matriarch Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis) demands that her unfaithful husband, Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia), end an affair. When he agrees to this, she immediately adds, in a dead-serious voice: "And go to confession."
Greydanus also praised the 2016 comedy Hail, Caesar! by the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. This satire explores the sins and foibles of various Hollywood players during the filming of a biblical epic in the golden 1950s.
The central character is a Hollywood "fixer" -- Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) -- who attempts to protect the public images of A-list stars. While most of the characters are quite ridiculous, he is shown to be a sincere Catholic who keeps returning to confession while wrestling with workaholism, his smoking habit and minor weaknesses as a husband and father.
"It's hard. But I'm trying," he tells his priest.
"This is what confession is about for most people," Greydanus said. This winsome character "confesses his sins and he is forgiven. Eddie Mannix is a decent man and he is struggling with the chaos in the world around him. It's hard and he knows that he needs help."
Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.
Religion on 05/16/2020