THE CONFESSION Movie Review

L'Aveu

It's amazing how rarely this film—one of the finest works by Costa-Gavras (Z, State of Siege, The Music Box)—shows up in repertory film programs or even on lists of important films of the 1970s. It may be that audiences that embraced Costa-Gavras's thunderously powerful Z were so caught up in the unraveling of the fascist conspiracy depicted in that film that they felt betrayed by The Confession, an even more detailed and brilliant depiction of the inherent dangers of a police state. The problem may be that this police state—the Czechoslovakia of 1951—called itself Communist when it arrested Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Artur London (fictionalized as “Gerard” in the film and played by Yves Montand) and 13 others for the crimes of spying for the U.S. and being “Zionists” (they were all Jews).The Stalinist show trial that ensued resulted in the execution of 11 of the men, though London himself was eventually tortured into signing a “confession” of his non-existent “crimes.” It wasn't long after The Confession's release that Montand himself became disillusioned with his own socialist leanings, and former friends found the film's uncompromising refusal to romanticize the movement both impossible to swallow yet impossible to refute.The result was that The Confession—perhaps the most gruelingly detailed portrait of psychological, political terrorism ever seen in a narrative film—was received politely and then politely ignored. Montand and real-life wife Simone Signoret are both wrenching and poignant in this resonant and memorable film: an intelligent, resolute, and unflinching portrait of the evil inherent in unchecked, absolute power, regardless of the label it slaps on itself.

NEXT STOP … State of Siege, Missing, The Thin Blue Line

1970 160m/C FR Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Gabriele Ferzetti, Michel Vitold, Jean Bouise; D: Constants Costa-Gavras; W: Jorge Semprun; C: Raoul Coutard. NYR