I Confess

I Confess was produced in 1952 and released in 1953.

Alfred Hitchcock on I Confess

A.H. We 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."
F.l. Then would you say that the basic concept of the film was wrong?
A.H. That's right; we shouldn't have made the picture.
Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut

"The final result was rather heavy-handed. The whole treatment was lacking in humor and subtlety. I don't mean that the film itself should have been humorous, but my own approach should have been more ironic, as in Psycho - a serious story told with tongue in cheek."
Francois Truffaut: Hitchcock

Cast

Montgomery Clift... Fr. Michael William Logan
Anne Baxter... Ruth Grandfort
Karl Malden... Inspector Larrue
Brian Aherne... Willy Robertson
O.E. Hasse... Otto Keller
Roger Dann... Pierre Grandfort
Dolly Haas... Alma Keller
Charles Andre... Fr. Millars

Some examples of the blackmail theme and where it occurs in Hitchcock's films

Blackmail, 1929	Tracy (Donald Calthrop) is blackmailing Alice (Anny Ondra, dubbed by Joan Barry) and Frank (John Longden). He saw that Alice was at the artist the night he was killed; ha also has one of her gloves, which can be used as evidence against her.
Rebecca 1939/1940	Rebecca's lover Jack Favell (George Sanders) tries to blackmail Maxim showing him a letter from Rebecca urging him excitedly to meet her, which seems to suggest she was not suicidal.
Stage Fright, 1949/1950	When Nellie Goode (Kay Walsh) uncovers the deception that is going on, Eve (Jane Wyman) manages to buy her off with blackmail money. With time running out, she persuades Smith (Michael Wilding) to accompany her to a garden party where Charlotte (Marlene Dietrich) is singing on stage in a large tent.
I Confess, 1952/1953	The murderered lawyer blackmailed the Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter) who was in love with Father Logan (Montgomery Clift)
Dial M for Murder, 1953/1954	Tony (Ray Milland) has been investigating Captain Lesgate - aka Charles Alexander Swann (Anthony Dawson) in order to blackmail him into committing the murder. Tony tells Swann of Margot's affair, including a love letter from Mark (Robert Cummings) which she once kept in her handbag. Six months ago, Tony stole the handbag and anonymously blackmailed her. After tricking Swann into leaving his fingerprints on the letter, Tony offers to pay him £1,000 to kill Margot (Grace Kelly). If he refuses, Tony will turn him in to the police as the blackmailer.

Flashbacks

The Lodger, 1926/1927	The lodger tells Daisy that he promised his mother that he wouldn't rest before the serial killer who calls himself the Avenger is caught The detective sees in double-exposed images the elements apparently linking the lodger to the murders.
Easy Virtue, 1927	During the trial against Mrs. Filton for misconduct in marriage there are several flashbacks.
Blackmail, 1929	Alice sees the hand of the murdered artist in a flashback when she is waiting to cross the street on her way home.
Bon Voyage, 1944
Aventure Malgache, 1944
Spellbound, 1944/1945	John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck) remembers the accident when his brother is impaled on the fence.
Stage Fright, 1949/1950	The lying flashback, one of the most discussed flashbacks in cinema history. Can a flashback lie? (At about the same time Akira Kurosawa made Rashomon, a film depicting the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband through the differing flashback accounts of four witnesses. Three of them must be wrong.) Hitchcock to Truffaut on the flashback in Stage Fright: "I did one thing in that picture that I never should have done; I put in a flashback that was a lie. [...] Strangely enough, in movies, people never object if a man is shown telling a lie. And it's also acceptable, when a character tells a story about the past, for the flashback to show it as if it were taking place in the present. So why is it that we can't tell a lie through a flashback?"
I Confess, 1952/1953	When the girls tell the detectives that they saw a priest leaving the murder victim's house, we see this in a flashback. When Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter) is telling about her being the young Father Logan's (Montgomery Clift) girlfriend and how she later got married and met the lawyer who blackmailed her, we see all this in a lengthy and narratively weak flashback.
Frenzy, 1971/1972	When the serial killer Bob Rusk (Barry Foster) remembers where the tiepin is, he sees fragments of Babs (Anna Massey) being murdered.