7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Refusing to break the seal of confession in response to a police investigator's questions, a priest becomes the prime suspect in a murder.
Starring: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, O.E. HasseFilm-Noir | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.36:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish=Latin & Castillian
English SDH, French, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Polish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Alfred Hitchcock once commented that he had miscalculated the audience for his 1953 thriller I Confess. "[W]e Catholics know that a priest cannot disclose the secret of the confessional, but the Protestants, the atheists, and the agnostics all say, 'Ridiculous! No man would remain silent and sacrifice his life for such a thing.'" Audiences today are more knowledgeable. The seal of confession that is central to the plot of I Confess is familiar enough from its use in police procedurals to require no explanation. Even so, Hitchcock's tale of a priest who finds himself accused of the very murder that he knows (but can't say) was committed by a member of his flock, is a tricky tale. Of all Hitchcock's falsely accused protagonists, Father Michael Logan may be the least relatable, because most people would speak up to save themselves. It's fortunate, then, that Hitchcock cast a young Montgomery Clift as the confessor who is forced to choose between honoring his obligations and avoiding the gallows. While Clift's personal quirks may have irritated Hitchcock to no end, his delicate features and intense concentration are essential to making Father Logan's predicament credible. Hitchcock may not have cared for "method" actors, but he needed one for I Confess—and he got one of the best at an early stage of Clift's all-too-brief film career, before illness, injury, drugs and alcohol took their toll. The Warner Archive Collection has followed their recent release of Hitchcock's The Wrong Man with a superb Blu-ray edition of I Confess. Both are lesser known entries in Hitchcock's filmography, and both now have been given presentations that allow them to be rediscovered.
Hitchcock's usual cinematographer, Robert Burks, shot I Confess in lustrous and richly textured black and white. For the film's Blu-ray debut, Warner's Motion Picture Imaging has newly scanned (at 2k) a preservation fine-grain master positive made from the original nitrate negative. As with many older films, the negative had already sustained significant wear-and-tear when the preservation master was created, and MPI performed frame-by-frame restoration to return the film to its original luster. WAC's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray shows the superior detail and fine delineations of grays and blacks that are the hallmarks of the nitrate "sparkle". Whether in the many closeups of Montgomery Clift's expressive face or in the courtroom scenes crowded with extras, the image is beautifully sharp and clear, with the exception of so-called "process shots", which are especially noticeable in this film because the rest is so vividly detailed. The blacks are deep and solid, whether of the priests' attire or of the film noir-like shadows in which Keller is first revealed as the killer. Unlike The Wrong Man, which was shot with a deliberately rough texture, I Confess has the fine grain of the best Hollywood productions. WAC has mastered I Confess with its usual high average bitrate, here 34.91 Mbps, ensuring a premium encode.
The film's original mono track has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. WAC has restored the audio, removing any pops, clicks or distortion, and the track plays with as good fidelity and dynamic range as the source will allow. Dialogue is clear, and the orchestral score by four-time Oscar winner Dmitri Tiomkin (High Noon), which utilizes a familiar motif from Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, provides both comment on the drama and an emotional underpinning.
Vertigo is often cited as Hitchcock's most "personal" film, but I Confess may be more so. The film had a much longer gestation than most of the director's projects, with multiple script rewrites, debates with the studio over story elements considered too controversial (including an illegitimate child) and casting changes. The result is unmistakably a Hitchcock film, but one unlike any other. Highly recommended.
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1956
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1950
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1949
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1993
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1944