An interesting gimmick employed by Hitchcock in most of his films was his inevitable cameo. Often, these would be some sort of minor joke. In 1956’s The Wrong Man, he makes it impossibly easy, as he addresses the audience directly before the opening credits. It’s like a Where’s Waldo with that character being the only element on an otherwise blank page.
His message he relays in the opening is also bereft of humor, as he solemnly tells us this is based on a true story. It would be the only film in his oeuvre where the inspiration was not at least somewhat obscured. Unfortunately, it hews so close to reality that the entertainment value is compromised. There’s a reason for that famous quote about printing the legend when having to choose between that and solid truth.
The background for the film was the wrongful arrest and almost successful trial of Christopher Emanuel “Manny” Balestrero for multiple armed robberies. Given the title of the picture, you know the wrong person has been accused, and we only know that if they were not convicted of the crime. So, there goes much of the suspense.
Henry Fonda stars as Balestrero. The real guy was apparently a bit dull, and Fonda plays him in a similar manner. I wonder if it was difficult to play a role upon which one wouldn’t be allowed to add considerable embellishments. Largely, he looks bewildered at what is happening to him. In one especially effective moment, we see in his face the penny dropping for him as he is being led to a holding cell.
Vera Miles plays his wife, and her role allows a bit more leniency, courtesy of an odd detour in the third act when she becomes mentally unstable. What is even more unusual is how this rather abrupt change in personality feels tacked on, when I can only assume the same degree of accuracy was applied to her story as to his.
What little suspense the film generates is some ambiguity as to whether he might be the robber, though that requires suspending the knowledge the audience already had going into this. Given his family’s need for money, including $300 to have Miles’s wisdom teeth removed, one can understand if the protagonist was looking to boost his income though illegal means.
It isn’t like he’s making much money from his gig as a stand-up bass player (or “bass fiddle”, as Vera put it to my jaw-dropping befuddlement–or, I guess, “befiddlement”) at The Stork Club. At least we get to see real footage of that establishment. Actually, being filmed largely in real locations in New York City not only adds verisimilitude but makes for an interesting time capsule of that place in that period. Some of these are retailers Fonda was supposed to have held-up, where police officers make him walk to the back of the location and then return to the entrance, all under the observation of the proprietors. No, Fonda does not do any catwalk fashion model flourishes, but thanks for asking.
I was confused by the activity which results in the arrest of Fonda. All he does is visit the agent holding his wife’s life insurance policy to see if they can borrow against it for that dental procedure. This location had been robbed before by a man with an uncanny resemblance to him, which had me wondering how often a theft is committed at the same location more than once by an undisguised criminal. That’s just shoddy banditeering in my opinion, and a shame to the profession.
The film’s one virtuoso moment, and the only occasion with the unique stamp of genius on it, is when the real criminal is revealed. This is accomplished through a cross-fade starting on a close-up of Fonda’s visage, transitioning to a guy in the distance out on a sidewalk. That guy then walks forward and, with the slightest turn of his head, his face almost perfectly aligns with Fonda’s semi-transparent one.
A couple of other moments in the film surprised me only after the fact, courtesy of an accompanying mini-doc on the blu-ray. There was one brief scene where the camera pushes in through the slot in the door of Fonda’s cell and on in. I assumed the door was in sections which were pulled away to make it seem we pass through that narrow opening. It turned out there was no such chicanery, but that technique was used for a moment where Fonda enters the front door of his house. The best magic tricks are the ones where you don’t even realize you have been deceived, and this is no exception. I didn’t even realize the house was a set, as it so closely matches other environments in the movie.
Lastly, another element which caught me off guard was an apparently sincere presentation of religion as a source of consolation. The closest analogy I can think of in Hitchcock’s library of work is how it regards Montgomery Clift’s portrayal of a priest in I Confess, but not even that feels as free of any additional commentary or baggage as such moments here.
The Wrong Man is an outlier in the Hitchcock filmography. Just as there are some who regard such experiments as Rope to be a failure, it is still interesting to see him taking up a challenge. What I found most baffling is how, for a film based in reality and set almost entirely in actual locations, it felt more artificial and stagey than many of his works with no grounding in reality and shot entirely on studio sets. The truth may be stranger than fiction, but the fiction often feels more real.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Henry Fonda, Vera Miles
Watched on Warner Archive blu-ray