L'aveu (1970)
(The Confession)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col/1.66:1 139m
Director: Costa-Gavras
Cast: Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Gabriele Ferzetti
Synopsis:
In Prague in the 1950s, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs is one of a number of high-ranking government officials made victims of a purge against so-called espionage activity, in concert with American contacts who at the time were fellow Communists, but can now be viewed only as Imperialists.
Review:
Clearly inspired by the debacle of the Prague Spring, Costa-Gavras's anatomy of an interrogation pulses with the indignation of a true revolutionary whose dream of social justice is transformed into a pantomime travesty, where past facts are reinterpreted to suit present imperatives, and the only guarantee of survival is perjury and the renunciation of due legal process. Interestingly, torture is never invoked, at least only of the psychological kind: removal of dignity, sleep, food, etc., whether to spare us or not is not clear. The direction is inventive, virtuoso even, in its mingling of time and place cutaways alongside the main narrative, and one emerges thanking Heaven for life under an imperfect democracy, as opposed to an infallible Party.
(The Confession)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col/1.66:1 139m
Director: Costa-Gavras
Cast: Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Gabriele Ferzetti
Synopsis:
In Prague in the 1950s, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs is one of a number of high-ranking government officials made victims of a purge against so-called espionage activity, in concert with American contacts who at the time were fellow Communists, but can now be viewed only as Imperialists.
Review:
Clearly inspired by the debacle of the Prague Spring, Costa-Gavras's anatomy of an interrogation pulses with the indignation of a true revolutionary whose dream of social justice is transformed into a pantomime travesty, where past facts are reinterpreted to suit present imperatives, and the only guarantee of survival is perjury and the renunciation of due legal process. Interestingly, torture is never invoked, at least only of the psychological kind: removal of dignity, sleep, food, etc., whether to spare us or not is not clear. The direction is inventive, virtuoso even, in its mingling of time and place cutaways alongside the main narrative, and one emerges thanking Heaven for life under an imperfect democracy, as opposed to an infallible Party.
(The Confession)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col/1.66:1 139m
Director: Costa-Gavras
Cast: Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Gabriele Ferzetti
Synopsis:
In Prague in the 1950s, the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs is one of a number of high-ranking government officials made victims of a purge against so-called espionage activity, in concert with American contacts who at the time were fellow Communists, but can now be viewed only as Imperialists.
Review:
Clearly inspired by the debacle of the Prague Spring, Costa-Gavras's anatomy of an interrogation pulses with the indignation of a true revolutionary whose dream of social justice is transformed into a pantomime travesty, where past facts are reinterpreted to suit present imperatives, and the only guarantee of survival is perjury and the renunciation of due legal process. Interestingly, torture is never invoked, at least only of the psychological kind: removal of dignity, sleep, food, etc., whether to spare us or not is not clear. The direction is inventive, virtuoso even, in its mingling of time and place cutaways alongside the main narrative, and one emerges thanking Heaven for life under an imperfect democracy, as opposed to an infallible Party.