to appeal, but are told by their court-appointed lawyers that the sentences are only for the party's benefit and will not be enforced if they do not appeal. The convicted men appear in court one final time to accept their sentences and waive their right to appeal. Afterwards, Artur and some of his colleagues are gradually freed and rehabilitated between 1956 and 1963. However, the rest are executed and cremated, with their ashes scattered along a road. At the same time, a number of the officials behind the ordeal end up facing their own persecutions, including Kohoutek, Artur's own interrogator. Artur later encounters the demoted Kohoutek, who tries to downplay his role in Artur's torment by claiming he was only following orders and never understood what the party wanted. In 1968, Artur completes his memoirs of his experiences in captivity and returns to Czechoslovakia to have them published. By then, amidst the Prague Spring, the reactionary elements who had orchestrated the entire affair had been pushed out of power by the party, and Artur believed that the party now desired to expose the truth of what happened during those years as much as Artur himself did. Unfortunately, he arrives in Prague just as the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia begins. Cast Yves Montand – Artur Ludvik Simone Signoret – Lise Ludvik Michel Vitold – Smola Gabriele Ferzetti – Kohoutek Jean Bouise – the factory head – Josef Pavel Gérard Darrieu – a policeman Gilles Segal Henri Marteau – a policeman Michel Beaune – the lawyer Jacques Rispal Michel Robin – the prosecutor – Tonda Marc Bonseignour Monique Chaumette Marc Eyraud Jean-François Gobbi William Jacques Guy Mairesse François Marthouret Umberto Raho Laszlo Szabo Antoine Vitez Production Yves Montand lost more than to play his role. Montand had been shaken by the 1956 events in Hungary and later said of the film: "There was in what I inflicted upon myself [for this role] something of an act of expiation." Reception and awards Vincent Canby in The New York Times in December 1970 did not consider The Confession a better film than Z (1969), but because the subject of this film "is much more complex, much more human, I find it vastly more interesting". It is "a harrowing film of intellectual and emotional anguish, dramatized by the breathless devices of melodrama." Roger Ebert wrote in April 1971: "It is not a thriller like