True Confession

Would-be writer Helen Bartlett is an inveterate teller of tall tales. Her husband, Ken, on the other hand, is an upright lawyer who believes in the truth, and nothing but the truth. Helen gets a job but quits immediately when her boss makes aggressive sexual advances. When he’s found shot dead shortly thereafter, she is accused of murder. Under police interrogation, Helen confesses to the crime, but doesn’t have the courage to tell her husband that her confession was a lie. Ken represents her at trial and pleads the case as self-defence. But there is an odd observer in the courtroom who seems to know the truth about what really happened … This wild comedy of marriage and justice is based on a French play and heaps one implausible incident onto the next. With her tongue often literally in her cheek, and a goodly dose of self-irony, Carole Lombard spins one fantabulous yarn after the next in service of the overwrought plot. Even Hollywood’s czar of public morals, Will H. Hays, had to forgive its evils, due to “the general farcical nature of the entire production and the grotesqueness of the scenes in the court”. (Berlinale)