my favorite movie of 1937:

Confession

(Kay Francis, Basil Rathbone. Directed by Joe May.)

After being so smoothly, glibly charming in Trouble in Paradise (one of my favorite movies of 1932), Kay Francis becomes more rough and multi-layered and unpredictable in Confession, a heart-breaking drama that focuses on how the legal system struggles to deal with grey areas. This movie was ahead of its time with experimental camerawork, nonlinear storytelling, and MeToo themes. A sequence filmed from the perspective of a woman as she wakes up in a disoriented state, apparently having been blackout drunk with a womanizer, had me stunned to think that this movie came out in 1937, not 2017.

Confession should be better known. So should Kay Francis.

I don’t know of anywhere to stream or rent Confession, but I strongly recommend this DVD.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.

Comments