Sunday, July 24, 2011

'I Confess' movie loaded with raw emotion

Alfred Hitchcock had a clever way of directing his films. The man managed to stick all kinds of interesting "twists" in his movies. And it got tricky to just keep up with all his witty cleverness. But somehow a soul got snared and the next thing was...the viewer going down deep into the well and finding the fellow 'Hitch' had managed a finesse job again. the man had another bit of film artistry going on. I believe the raw emotion that is a burning portion of the Hitchcock movie works rather resembles the gutsy feelings one gets when listening to old-style rock sounds like those coming frm Elvis, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and yes even some musicians who came a little later like Led Zeppelin and the wild fellows, ZZ-Top. Emotion can produce a whole new dimension in a man or a woman's life. It is a fact that when a big serving of wild emotion explodes into a person's brain then a more compelling and fascinating human being's personality is born. Getting back to the clever core of gritty Hitchcock stuff, one of my favorite H. movies is a thing called 'I Confess' that came out in 1953. This one had Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter and Karl Malden. The story of a priest (Montgomery Clift) is slick. The psychological teeth of this number is the riveting bloodstream of the story that somehow has the priest Clift ending up as a top suspect in a rugged murder. A church caretaker at a Quebec Catholic church confesses to the priest Clift and then inexorably Mr. Clift is drawn into a spidery web making him wonder what in the world to do with this confessed stream of consciousness. When the police figure the priest Clift has something to do with all this then the guy cannot spill his guts and tell stuff. In a strange way I remembered the clever old actor Walter Brennan when watching Monty Clift's performance. Brennan like Clift was seemingly always getting hung up in a tidal wave of roughhouse emotions that had people really strung out. A sleek additional blue note in this interesting 'I Confess' film is the romantic stuff Mr. Clift and the unique actress, Anne Baxter, get themselves into. And the wild, profound actor Karl Malden pounds out a good performance too in this odd story. Just like listening to grilling, powerful Elvis Presley songs the films of Alfred Hitchcock remain well-honed bits of cinematic steel fixed up on the anvil of truly skilled movie making. Intense emotion in movies rings all our chimes and slips us into a deep abyss of a mind-blowing experience we can really sink our teeth into.

1 comment:

Nice Writing

THE GOOD terse writing of Ernest Hemingway is a real joy.  He does not use too many adjectives.  His 'Torrents' is a fine tome.