In an arm’s-length kind of way, Hitchcock kept in touch with his alma mater, too. A history of the school, published to celebrate its centenary in 1994, named Hitchcock as one of the school’s alumni who had “given greater glory to God by their life’s work.” It concedes that “his admiration for his old school was not unbounded” but also confirms that it was he who provided the lion’s share of funds for new buildings on the school site. He was similarly giving to Catholic causes in California, even though his attendance at Mass became fitful after a few years in America. He formed a close bond with the Jesuit priest Thomas Sullivan, whose various charitable endeavors Hitchcock supported. It was to Sullivan that he wrote in 1966 to decline a request to give a speech at a function, telling Sullivan that such events caused him great anxiety, likening it to the drain he felt from making a film: “I go through hell and get no pleasure at all from the fact that it succeeds. I’m only relieved that it wasn’t a complete failure.” Not a confession as such, but few people received such emotional honesty from the man who publicly claimed to feel nothing but soporific boredom on a production once the script was finished.
Hitchcock’s knowledge of being a practicing Catholic is unequivocally present in I Confess, his most explicitly Catholic film, released in 1952. Not only is its protagonist a priest, but its plot depends on the detail of sacrament, a rare example of a Hollywood movie that shows its audience the priesthood from inside the Church. The action takes place in Quebec City, in which Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift) hears the confession of his caretaker, Otto Keller (O. E. Hasse), who reveals that, while disguised as a priest, he has just killed a wealthy local man by the name of Villette, whose home Keller was attempting to burgle. In a characteristic twist, we soon learn that Villette was blackmailing Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter), the wife of a high-profile politician, over a secret relationship she had with Logan before he took orders. When the police investigate the murder, Ruth confesses her past romance with Logan, while Keller plays innocent, knowing that the rules of the sacrament prohibit Logan from revealing what he has heard in confession. Logan is arrested and tried for Villette’s murder but refuses to reveal the truth, honoring spiritual authorities over civil ones. By a whisker, he avoids a guilty verdict, to the fury of the public. Racked with guilt, Keller’s wife runs to Logan to apologize. In desperation, Keller shoots her and runs away, at which point the police fathom their mistake. In a final scene, Keller is killed by a police officer’s gunfire, and is cradled by Logan who reads him his last rites.
I Confess is not in the first rank of Hitchcock movies, but it treats its subject with intelligence; the complex character dynamics belie the idea that Hitchcock films relegate characterization to playful afterthought. Hitchcock himself, however, was not a fan. Dissatisfaction with casting, lack of humor, frustrations with Clift, and underwhelming box-office takings, led him to speak coolly of the film in later years. He was also frustrated that people identified the central premise of the movie—Logan’s refusal to divulge what Keller tells him in confession—as the latest example of Hitchcock’s war against narrative plausibility. Not only does the film reflect a truth about the sacredness of sacrament, it is rooted in the real-world experience of many Catholics of the time who felt the push and pull of competing bases of truth. The tussle between the rule of law and the rule of God is one that was particularly pertinent to the film’s setting—Quebec of the 1950s—which was still a place where “the Holy Church cherished quotidian control over the prospects of men,” to quote one Canadian writer who lived through the period.
The two other Hitchcock films in which the practice of Catholicism plays an explicit part likewise sprang from factual events, and speak to moments when the Catholic faith conflicts with the secular institutions of the modern world. The Wrong Man is based on the true story of a man who clings to his Catholicism when the law convicts him of a crime he has not committed; Juno and the Paycock is set amid the Irish Civil War, when the old religion provides succor to those caught up in the battles of nationalism and imperialism. At the end of the latter film, Juno, played by Sara Allgood, pleads with statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary to help her rise above the violence that has torn her family apart. In his own pit of despair, Manny Balestrero clutches rosary beads and prays before a portrait of Jesus in The Wrong Man. Though Hitchcock expressed regret that his editing might imply that Manny’s eventual exculpation resulted from his prayers—a trill that deviated from the strict recitation of fact that had been the director’s stated aim—it is the ritualistic adherence to Catholicism that provides a mystical counterpoint to the equally proscriptive rituals of the criminal justice system. The rule of law is meant to be an objective, rational process, but its capriciousness bewilders Manny and crushes Rose, whose faith in law and God cracks. She tells her husband, “No matter what you do they’ve got it fixed so that it goes against you. No matter how innocent you are or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.”
