I Confess

I didn't like I Confess when I saw it years ago and I still find it a hard nut to crack. Its virtues are easy enough to see: elegant compositions, beautiful photography, interesting performances ... but it does not gel. The entirely weird flashback sequence is probably brilliant but is lost on me and I was thoroughly distracted. I do have a new appreciation for the performance of the part of the bad guy. His weakness, greed and general subhuman behaviors are so blatant that they are almost charming, Bush q.v. His cheerful, frightened bleating is almost worthy of pity. But even Bilbo would have stabbed him, unlike Clift Montgomery's character who beats Christ by a mile on the martyr scale.