‘L’aveu‘ (the English title is ‘The Confession‘), a film made in 1970 by Costa-Gavras a year after the international success of his previous film, ‘Z‘, is already an object of historical study. A year after exposing to the world in one of the best political thrillers ever made the mechanisms of political assassinations and the rise to power of a right-wing regime, Costa-Gavras describes the mechanisms of totalitarian repression of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia using a real historical case, the one of the communist leader Artur London. He had been tried and convicted in 1952 on fabricated charges and imaginary guilt, along with much of the leadership of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, in a public show trial organized by Stalin’s order. Being one of the few defendants who had not been sentenced to death, he had the chance to survive and even be released a few years later, after the death of the Kremlin dictator, and to write a book describing in detail the events that led to his arrest, the investigations and tortures, the trial. I think that Costa-Gavras‘ two films, ‘Z‘ and ‘L’aveu‘, should be appreciated together, because they represent together an indictment against totalitarianisms of any orientation and samples of political cinema among the best ever made.
Anton Ludvik (Yves Montand) was a veteran of the anti-fascist struggle and a convinced communist. The year the action begins is 1950, soon after the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia by force and with the help of the Soviet army. Gerard (the conspiratorial name turned into heroic nickname) becomes one of the members of the nomenclatura, a deputy foreign minister, he lives in a luxurious villa with his French wife (Simone Signoret) and he drives his own car. Despite all his merits, he notices that he is being pursued by the secret police, and after a short time he is arrested. He had fallen victim, along with much of Czechoslovakia’s communist leadership, to Stalinist paranoia and the Kremlin dictator’s desire to find scapegoats for the failures of the communist system. The method invented in 1936-1938 in the Soviet Union during the Great Terror was that of public show trials, in which accusers, former dignitaries of the regime, acknowledged imaginary and phantasmagoric guilt and were sentenced to harsh punishments, often to death, to the applause of the audiences. Those who could endanger the leaders at the top of the pyramid and those who had political tendencies that deviated from the party’s political line were thus eliminated, and an atmosphere of suspicion and terror was established throughout the population and even among the supporters of the regime. The film describes in detail the mechanisms of investigation and terrorization of detainees who turned them from dignitaries and sometimes heroes of communism into human wrecks, able to take responsibility for imaginary crimes and lead through their confessions to their own condemnation.
The format conceived by Costa-Gavras is that of docu-drama, although the term was probably not invented at the time the film was made. The main source of the script is the book written by Artur London and his wife after their release from prison and after they arrived in the West. Yves Montand plays one of the great roles of his career here, following the twenty months of investigation in which the self-confident man, the hero of the Spanish Civil War and the Anti-Fascist Resistance becomes a prisoner identified only by a number and a coward able to denounce and falsely accuse his friends and himself. Simone Signoret is also excellent in the role of the wife who suffers the consequences of the fall of her husband, continuing to support him and taking responsibility for the survival of the family. Many of the scenes are harsh and painful, but the two actors manage to give dignity and human dimensions to the dilemmas and confrontations that the heroes experience. The scenes from the trial are also of a remarkable authenticity and precision in reconstructing the historical details. Watching this film, we can’t help but think of the other ‘Process’ that was created in the Czech space, Kafka’s novel. The finale puts the episode of Stalinist trials in the context of the events of 1968, in which Czechoslovakia had experienced for a few months ‘socialism with a human face’, an experiment cut short by another invasion of the Soviet army. Today, 70 years after the Stalinist trials, 50 years after the film was made, and 30 years after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe, we can see ‘L’aveu‘ in perspective and appreciate Costa-Gavras‘ lucid vision in bringing to screen one of the painful episodes in the history of totalitarianism and its consequences.