Confession

Vera Kowalska is on trial for the murder of the concert pianist Michael Michailow, and as the hearing goes on it emerges how he ruined her life years earlier. Warner Bros. had bought the American distribution rights to the 1935 German film Mazurka, then shelved it and made its own version instead. Having watched Mazurka, the director Joe May insisted on reproducing it shot for shot, timing scenes with a stopwatch, to the considerable irritation of the cast and crew. What came out carries the expressionist manner of its German source with it, in the camera angles and the stylised make-up. It opened in New York on 19 August 1937, with Kay Francis, Ian Hunter and Basil Rathbone in the cast.