The Wrong Man
| The Wrong Man | |
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 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Produced by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Screenplay by | Maxwell Anderson Angus MacPhail |
| Story by | Maxwell Anderson |
| Starring | Henry Fonda Vera Miles Anthony Quayle Harold Stone |
| Music by | Bernard Herrmann |
| Cinematography | Robert Burks |
| Editing by | George Tomasini |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | December 22, 1956 (U.S.) |
| Running time | 105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$1,200,000 |
| Box office | US$2,000,000 |
The Wrong Man is a 1956 film by Alfred Hitchcock which stars Henry Fonda and Vera Miles.[1][2] The film is based on a true story of an innocent man charged for a crime he did not commit. The story was based on the book The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero by Maxwell Anderson and the article "A Case of Identity" (Life magazine, June 29, 1953) by Herbert Brean[3].
It was one of the few Hitchcock films based on a true story, and unusually for Hitchcock, the facts of the story were not changed much.
The Wrong Man has had a significant influence on many directors[citation needed]. The Wrong Man provoked the longest piece of criticism written by Jean-Luc Godard and was an influence on Taxi Driver.[4]
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[edit] Plot
The film examines the experience of Manny Balestrero (Fonda) who works as a musician in the Stork Club, a nightclub in New York City. Manny and Rose (Miles), his wife, have very little money. When Rose needs some dental work, Manny attempts to borrow on her insurance policy at the insurance office. Unfortunately, he bears a resemblance to an armed robber who had held up the office twice before, so the police are called. Manny is identified by several witnesses and, when providing a handwriting sample, he nervously misspells a word that was also misspelled on the robbery note. He is arrested and charged with the crime.
His defense attorney, Frank O'Connor, (British actor Anthony Quayle) builds a case based on mistaken identity. At the time of the first hold-up Manny was away on vacation with his family. At the time of the second hold-up, Manny had a swollen jaw - a fact which the insurance-office employee would have noticed if Manny had been the robber. Manny and Rose look for the three people who could have testified that he was present at the vacation hotel on the day of the hold-up, but two had died in the intervening months and the third could not be found. The stress of all this has a devastating effect on Rose who slowly descends into depression to the point where she is institutionalized.
During the trial a juror, bored with the minutiae of one witness's testimony, makes a remark which prompts the judge to grant a mistrial. While Manny is awaiting re-trial the real robber is arrested in the act of robbing a grocery store and Manny is exonerated. He visits Rose at the sanatorium to tell her the good news but she remains in an apathetic state. The film closes with a textual epilogue that reveals that two years later Rose had fully recovered and the family moved to Florida.
[edit] Historical notes
The real O'Connor (1909–1992) was a New York State Senator at the time of the trial. He went on to become district attorney of Queens County (New York City, New York), president of the New York City Council and an appellate-court judge.
[edit] Production
Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In The Wrong Man he can be seen (at the beginning of the film before the credits) in silhouette standing in a darkened studio as he tells the audience the film is a true story.
Most of the prison scenes were filmed in a real prison (City Prison in Queens, New York). When Manny (Henry Fonda) is taken to his cell, a constructed set, one of the actual inmates shouts "What'd they get ya for, Henry?".
The film was scored by Bernard Herrmann who wrote the soundtracks for all of Hitchcock's films from The Trouble with Harry (1955) through Marnie (1964). It is one of the most-subdued scores Herrmann ever wrote and one of the few he composed with some jazz elements, primarily to represent Fonda's appearance as a musician in the nightclub scenes.
It was the final film that Hitchcock made for Warner Bros., completing a contract commitment that had begun with two films produced for Transatlantic Pictures and released by Warner Bros. in the late 1940s, Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949) (his first two films in Technicolor). After The Wrong Man, Hitchcock returned to Paramount Pictures.
[edit] Cast
- Henry Fonda as Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero
- Vera Miles as Rose Balestrero
- Anthony Quayle as Frank O'Connor
- Harold J. Stone as Jack Lee
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Variety film review; January 2, 1957, page 6.
- ^ Harrison's Reports film review; December 22, 1956, page 204.
- ^ Brean, Herbert (June 29, 1953). "A Case of Identity". Life, p. 97.
- ^ Godard on Godard, translated by Tom Milne, Da Capo Press) in his years as a critic; and in Scorsese on Scorsese (edited by Ian Christie and David Thompson), it is cited as an influence on Taxi Driver.
[edit] External links
- The Wrong Man at AllRovi
- The Wrong Man at the Internet Movie Database
- The Wrong Man at the TCM Movie Database
- DVD Review Review of the film at Vista Records
- The Wrong Man Eyegate Gallery
- Slant magazine review of film
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