#16 in the Reverse Hitchcock project.
A minor Hitchcock to many, this murder thriller has the complication of the accused being a man of the cloth, the suitably angst-ridden Method actor Montgomery Clift, whose opulent church is the scene for a confession which may cause him problems later on.
No mystery in this one as the murderer is revealed within the first ten minutes, what follows is a psychological struggle of conscience on behalf of the priest who, even when under suspicion himself, cannot break the seal of the confessional. The shadowy opening where someone in priestly robes leaves the dead man leaves us in some doubt as to the solution.
This has a similar downbeat feel to ‘The Wrong Man’, in which Henry Fonda had been accused for robberies he had not done, but in this case the stakes are much higher. Clift’s Father Logan is on the side of God, but is God on his side?
It is possible that Hitch may have been irritated by his star’s insistence on the Method and his character’s motivation, but he gets a good performance out of his whether that was in the editing suite or in Clif’s devotion to his craft. Anne Baxter is second billed as Ruth (the former girlfriend of Logan’s before he took his vows) and his advocate when he is accused of the crime.
Karl Malden is the friendly but suspicious cop who initially falls for the real killer’s lies, but who eventually makes everything right – interesting that he subscribes to the fear of the priest, but not the fear of the foreign unknown.
I still like this film, but it loses half a star on this rewatch. There are cleverer and flashier titles in Hitch’s filmography, although this remains eminently watchable.