The Confession (1970)
Yves Montand: Gérard
Photos
Quotes
-
Interrogator : You must confess your guilt. As an obedient member of the party, you must submit.
A.L. : If I am not a good communist, but a Trotskyist spy, why appeal to my loyalty? If I'm a good communist, why am I here?
-
A.L. : [on hearing that a traitor was discovered in the Party] I hope the tree isn't hiding the forest.
-
A.L. : You're not the Central Committee.
Interrogator : We're above the Central Committee. Our task is to unmask traitors even within the Committee! We represent the power of the proletariat.
-
A.L. : A quotation haunted me, "The individual becomes guilty not because he is guilty, but because he may be thought so."
-
A.L. : But in Spain, in 1937, they were Yugoslav communists, not Titoists.
Interrogator : An ex-undersecretary too. You don't know the ABCs of dialectics. The past must be judged in the light of truths established today
-
A.L. : They're going to hang me. They'll make me disappear, like Wagner is Moscow. They will say I commited suicide for having too many regrets.
-
Interrogator : You're here to confess your crimes. You must confess.
A.L. : Confess what? Who are you?
Interrogator : Date - February 1. Confess. Admit who you are.
A.L. : I'm the Undersecretary of Foreign...
Interrogator : You're a number. What is it? Your number?
A.L. : 3225. What am I accused of?
Interrogator : You know very well. There's a name for men like you. What's your name?
A.L. : The party knows my...
Interrogator : Don't involve the party. Never invoke the party. You're here to confess, and you will.
A.L. : I want to see an official...
Interrogator : Confess!
A.L. : Confess what?
Interrogator : Confess!
-
A.L. : My father was the fifth of eight children, son of a railroad man in Moravia under Austro-Hungarian rule. Then he went to Switzerland and in about 1900 emigrated to America. He learned English very quickly. He could recite Whitman poems by heart and pages of Paine and Jefferson. In New York he met my mother, also an emigre. They came back home together. In the First World War, he was a stretcher bearer. Through contact with Russian prisoners, he learned about Bolshevism. From him I first heard of Rosa Luxemburg, the Spartacists, Lenin, the Commune of Canton. It was he who made me read Heinrich Heine. He pointed my way into the Communist Youth.
