****SPOILERS*** Brought up on charges of treason against the state the Cardinal, Alec Guinness, of an Eastern European communist nation is put through the ringer by his Interrogator, Jack Hawkins, in order to get him to confess to his so-called crimes. The Cardinal who's an old hand at being tortured by the German Gestapo during WWII takes it all in stride not caring what is done to his body but when the Interrogator starts to work on his mind and his life as a young boy in the city fish market he strikes a raw nerve with the Cardinal.
The Cardinal has done some bad things, like sticking his hand in the cookie jar, in the past before he became religious and it's his former comrade in arms, against the Nazis, in WWII, the Interrogator who brings those events out into the open. It takes some three months for the Interrogator to get the Cardinal to crack with days of sleep deprivation and weeks of isolation but in the end the Cardinal finally gives in to all of his demands.
***SPOILERS*** At his trial the Cardinal confesses to everything, even the Lincoln and Julius Cesar assassinations, under the sun in an open court with those in attendance, mostly the Cardinal's supporters, open mouthed and shocked by his many false and mindless confessions. It didn't take long for the smug with victory Interrogator to realize that all his efforts in getting the Cardinal to confess backfired in his face! The vary fact that the Cardinal so eagerly confessed to all if not even more of the crimes that he was accused of by the state showed the people that he was just playing along with his captors and in fact showing them up for the brutish thugs whom they are. With his conviction thrown out and confessions shown to be total lies and BS it's the Cardinal who in fact got the last laugh not the Interrogator and his superiors. And with that the Cardinal walks out free as a bird or cardinal from prison to the cheers of all the people who were tried to be made out, by the Interrogator, that he betrayed!
The Cardinal has done some bad things, like sticking his hand in the cookie jar, in the past before he became religious and it's his former comrade in arms, against the Nazis, in WWII, the Interrogator who brings those events out into the open. It takes some three months for the Interrogator to get the Cardinal to crack with days of sleep deprivation and weeks of isolation but in the end the Cardinal finally gives in to all of his demands.
***SPOILERS*** At his trial the Cardinal confesses to everything, even the Lincoln and Julius Cesar assassinations, under the sun in an open court with those in attendance, mostly the Cardinal's supporters, open mouthed and shocked by his many false and mindless confessions. It didn't take long for the smug with victory Interrogator to realize that all his efforts in getting the Cardinal to confess backfired in his face! The vary fact that the Cardinal so eagerly confessed to all if not even more of the crimes that he was accused of by the state showed the people that he was just playing along with his captors and in fact showing them up for the brutish thugs whom they are. With his conviction thrown out and confessions shown to be total lies and BS it's the Cardinal who in fact got the last laugh not the Interrogator and his superiors. And with that the Cardinal walks out free as a bird or cardinal from prison to the cheers of all the people who were tried to be made out, by the Interrogator, that he betrayed!