‘How kindly he hears my confession:’ A thought experiment for teaching Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) in the context of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm

Abstract

While not often ranked amongst Alfred Hitchcock’s most popular or critically lauded films, 1953s I Confess is a compelling work for many reasons, including its ability to provoke thoughtful questions about Catholicism. In this paper, I describe a particular assignment I give in an undergraduate course called Catholicism on Film, and argue for its usefulness as a means of integrating the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm into a course taught at a secular institution, that examines the role of Catholicism in popular cinema. As well, this paper contends that cinema, as an artform, has a unique ability to explore Catholicism, and that Hitchcock's film is a particularly strong exemplar of how movies, an inherently empathetic medium, can shift our perceptions of each other, and something as seemingly rigid as dogmatic laws.