Condemned – by the lies of an evil empire

THESE days it is possible to get hold of almost any old movie, however obscure. But there are exceptions.

For years now I have sought to find a recording of Costa-Gavras’s powerful 1970 film The Confession. It is a proper professional movie, starring Yves Montand, right, and Simone Signoret – reasonably big names.

I searched and searched. I even contacted a company in Saskatchewan which specialised in locating hard-to-find videos and DVDs, and they admitted defeat. At last, thanks to the kindness of an alert reader, I have got hold of it and watched it for the first time in 45 years.

And you can see why it does not often get revived. The portrayal of Communist cynicism and brutality in forcing their own loyal comrades to parrot lies and so condemn themselves to unjust death is not a story Left-wing people will much like to see told.

Deep down many of them have never quite fallen out of love with the old evil empire, whatever they say now.

Two especially terrible scenes stay in the mind. One of the accused, who has been starved and beaten for months before being forced to give lying evidence against himself, has been dressed in one of his old suits and put under a sunlamp to hide the effects of his cruel interrogation. But his diet of prison slop has made him so thin that his trousers fall down as he takes the witness stand. In a prolonged moment of horror, everyone in the courtroom laughs, even the condemned man, though they all know that he is about to hang.

The other shows a pair of secret policemen, whose car is stuck in heavy snow, using the cremated ashes of the condemned to grit the icy road and go on their way. This actually happened.