The Confession (1970)

Excellent movie of what happens to you under a communistic system when it turns on you! Riveting, captivating true story of how high ranking leadership in the communist party are taking down by other higher ranking leaders and of course the system itself. The story doesn't waste much time in getting started so pay close attention as it takes off when you least expect it to. There will be flashbacks that come and go that may throw you off only slightly but if you listen and watch they are handled and put you on track for being taken prisoner yourself! That's right! The viewer is sucked in and kept there and as we watch the methods used in the USSR to break someone's power and will, we will be affected just by association. You have to remember its only a movie at times but real none the less. The lead actor does an excellent job as does the supporting players. Slowly, people who thought they were untouchable and above it all have their worlds shattered. Who can survive? How? That what awaits and more when you tune in here. I kept wondering when will all this subtle and highly sophisticated manipulation of people and facts will end and it doesn't disappoint you when we get there. Some people who had to travel into this system paid for the journey with their lives while others got to live to tell this story. Power corrupts, is an illusion and here you will learn is a form of control. This is where it becomes most effective. The people in this system obey it without question making you ask this question: Are they afraid they will be next? What happens is not a love driven dynamic as we watch it unfold. However we become very glad that we live in America. The USA is not perfect but keep me away from this system at all costs. Highly recommend a tasty drink and a sandwich which by the way is in this movie making you want one. Good sunflower seeds movie as well. Confess now or confess later but one thing is for sure. You will confess

I got dragged into this movie like the protagonist got dragged into the brutal, endless interrogation. Given the overall vapidity of most of today's films, this is a real diversion into the power that really lies beneath the surface of movies, the acting, the writing, directing, and most important the mood. The mood of this film drags you like it does the character played by Yves Montand, as he endures a two year interrogation by the people's republic. It's real historic as well, full of details about Titoists, Trotskyites, and anarchists and paranoia over the struggle to control the communist revolution. But Montand looks great as he endures an impressive variety of interrogation techniques.

Costa Gavras followed up his greatest critical and commercial success, "Z", with this initially confusing but ultimately illuminating political drama (which predates, and resembles more than a little, both "Papillon" and "Midnight Express"). Occasionally it can be just as exhausting for the viewer as it is for Yves Montand's character; Gavras reaches into a whole bag of cinematic tricks, but cannot quite camouflage the repetitive nature of the story; on the whole, however, "The Confession" is a powerful, sad, enraging experience. Although some viewers who still believe in the socialist ideals are bound to hate it for what it exposes, it's still the work of a genuine socialist who grieves over what became of Lenin's revolution in Stalin's (and his successors') hands. Or, as the young Czechs' graffiti on the wall in the final shot says, "Lenin, wake up! They've gone crazy". *** out of 4.

More often than not it's disappointing when an elusive film finally turns up and often the disappointment is in direct proportion to how badly one has looked forward to seeing it but I'm delighted to say that this one lived up to my expectations. Bowing as I do to no one in my love, respect and admiration for Yves Montand both as singer and actor I have, not unnaturally read all the books by and about him, bought all the albums but not, alas, seen all the films and of those elusive titles this one was the most sought-after. I knew by definition of Montand's strong Left-wing convictions - the son of an active Communist with a brother equally active and eventually high-ranking in the party -which if anything intensified after his marriage to Simone Signoret so that their life together was punctuated not only by concerts and film making but also by pro-Communist crusading (over the years they signed literally dozens of petitions)yet despite that background he agreed to make a film based on the real-life experience of Artur London, a high-ranking Communist in what was then Czechoslovakia, who, in a Kafkaesque nightmare was arrested and tortured - both mentally and physically - by fellow Communists with the end result of obtaining a confession (L'Aveu is, of course, French for confession) that he had betrayed the party. I'm about as far from a political animal as you can get whilst conversely I'm the nearest thing to Montand-For-President and that, pretty much is how I approached the film. Montand is fantastic. Let me put it another way: Montand is FANTASTIC. Required to run a gamut from suspicion at one end to mental and physical exhaustion at the other he inhabits the part completely. Considering that films are shot out of sequence and over a period of several weeks or months the manner in which he not only sustains a performance but builds it piece by piece like Jacques Villeret building an Eiffel Tower of matches in Diner du Cons is masterful. As a take on the way in which the Communist mind works (or worked) it is illuminating and full of wry touches in the dialogue as when Montand, urged to confess his mythical crimes argues quite naturally that if he IS a traitor then how can they believe anything he says, if he is NOT a traitor why is he in prison. The only negative is that I saw it in a small Art House in Paris as part of a Costa-Gavros retrospection and it's unavailable on DVD. Highly recommended.