This is sort of an oddball Hitchcock.\u00a0 It\u2019s based on a true story.\u00a0 But being a Hitchcock film during his heyday, it is well worth discussing.<\/p>\n
The \u201cWrong Man\u201d is the true story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero a musician living in Queens, New York with his wife and two sons who in 1953 was accused of a series of armed robberies based on his close resemblance to the actual robber.\u00a0 The movie walks you through Manny Balestrero\u2019s life on the day of his arrest.\u00a0 He\u2019s coming home early in the morning from his job as a musician at the upscale night club, the Stork Club and after breakfast he discusses with his wife how to finance the dental work that she needs.\u00a0 Because they live pay check to pay check he intends to get a loan on his wife\u2019s life insurance policy.\u00a0 But when he goes to the insurance office two of the women there think they recognize him as the man who robbed the office in the not-too-distant past.\u00a0 After Manny leaves, their manager calls the police and gives them Manny\u2019s name and address to have him arrested for the hold up.<\/p>\n
The police call up Manny\u2019s home and surreptitiously determine what time he is expected home. \u00a0Two plains cloth policemen, Lee and Matthews, are waiting outside his house in their car and intercept him before he gets inside.\u00a0 They inform him there\u2019s been a complaint against him and tell him to come with them to straighten it out.\u00a0 The police have Manny walk through several local stores that were robbed by the same man and allow the store personnel to have a chance to identify him.\u00a0 They then go back to the precinct where Manny is told to print up a note dictated to him to match the writing on a note that the actual robber handed the clerk at the insurance company.\u00a0 When Officer Lee says that there is some resemblance to the printing in the note, he asks Manny to print it again.\u00a0 This time Lee notes that a misspelling by Manny matches a misspelling in the original note.\u00a0 This convinces the police officers that Manny is the actual armed robber.<\/p>\n
Next, they have Manny in a lineup and the two insurance office clerks identify him as the robber.\u00a0 Following this identification, he is formally charged with the crimes and remanded to the Queensborough lock up.\u00a0 We see Manny being led to his cell and his tie taken away to prevent possible suicide.\u00a0 And we are shown Manny desperate and confused as he awaits the next steps in his nightmare.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile his family is frantically searching for Manny and assuming that he has met with an accident or some other misfortune.\u00a0 Finally, much later the police leave a message at his home about his arrest and the arraignment in the morning.<\/p>\n
At the arraignment Manny is told that his bail will be $6,500.\u00a0 Lacking this large amount of money, he is remanded into custody and processed into the long-term jail.\u00a0 He goes through all the usual indignities and is housed in a cell.\u00a0 But very soon after his family manages to borrow the money and he is released on bail.<\/p>\n
What follows is the process of Manny attempting to prove his innocence.\u00a0 He hires a good lawyer and attempts to find witnesses to prove where he was on the day of the insurance company hold up.\u00a0 Of the three possible witnesses two have died in the interim and one cannot be located.\u00a0 At this point, Manny\u2019s wife Rose suffers a nervous breakdown and goes into a clinical depression for which she is hospitalized.\u00a0 The trial begins and the prosecutor paints Manny\u2019s poverty in terms that make it reasonable that he would have been desperate enough to commit the robberies.\u00a0 The witnesses are paraded into the court and dramatically identify Manny as the armed robber.\u00a0 But during the summation, a juror irritably stands up and complains about the drawn-out nature of the testimony and causes a mistrial to be declared.<\/p>\n
Manny has now reached the end of his rope. \u00a0His mother is staying over to watch the kids in his wife\u2019s absence and in resignation he tells her that he wishes they would just convict him and end the agony.\u00a0 She begs him to pray to God for strength and afterward we see him praying.\u00a0 And then we see overlayed onto the scene of Manny praying, another face.\u00a0 Another man, and the man\u2019s face has a general similarity to Manny\u2019s face.\u00a0 Then we see the man enter a small grocery store and attempt to rob it.\u00a0 He claims to have a gun in his pocket.\u00a0 But the Mom-and-Pop owners of the store knock him down and subdue him.<\/p>\n
The man is arrested and is in the precinct being processed for the robbery attempt.\u00a0 Walking through the precinct and noticing the robber is Officer Matthews.\u00a0 He walks out of the precinct but after a few moments he stops, looks puzzled and goes back into the precinct.<\/p>\n
Now we see Manny at work at the Stork Club and his boss tells him they want him at the precinct.\u00a0 Manny reaches the precinct and his lawyer is there and tells him the good news.\u00a0 Now we hear the same two insurance clerks picking out the real robber in a line up.\u00a0 When they walk out, they see Manny and embarrassedly hurry past him.\u00a0 Officer Matthews smiles at Manny and pats his shoulder.\u00a0 Then the robber walks by Manny and they both look at each other in surprise at their resemblance.\u00a0 Manny accuses him saying, \u201cDo you know what you\u2019ve done to my wife?\u201d\u00a0 But the robber is just shuffled off to his fate.<\/p>\n
In the final scene Manny visits his wife at the mental hospital where she is still deeply sunk into depression.\u00a0 A post script says that two years later Rose is fully cured and the family has moved to Florida.<\/p>\n
Hitchcock made a very good selection.\u00a0 This story contains many of the components that a fictional account would include to provide human interest.\u00a0 The innocent man caught in a circumstantial nightmare where his blameless life cannot protect him from a cruel twist of fate.\u00a0 His accidental resemblance to a criminal and being in the wrong place at the wrong time almost destroy his life and that of his family.\u00a0 Only another twist of fate saves him.<\/p>\n
Hitchcock parades us through the police procedural but from the point of view of the innocent man trapped in the gears of a soulless large city\u2019s law enforcement machine.\u00a0 The dehumanization and callousness of the experience is mirrored in Henry Fonda\u2019s haunted expression.\u00a0 The harrowing details of his and Rose\u2019s struggle is extremely effective in drawing out the audience\u2019s sympathy.\u00a0 Vera Miles as Rose and Anthony Quayle as their attorney Frank O’Connor are both very good.\u00a0 But even Fonda isn\u2019t the lead character.\u00a0 The star of the show is terror, the terror of the wrongly accused.\u00a0 The story reminds me of a Greek tragedy.\u00a0 But in this case the sin is not hubris.\u00a0 It\u2019s living in New York City where no one knows their neighbors and no one is your neighbor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is sort of an oddball Hitchcock.\u00a0 It\u2019s based on a true story.\u00a0 But being a Hitchcock film during his heyday, it is well worth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[494,2831,2829,43,38,1355,2832,2830],"class_list":["post-13082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-anthony-quayle","tag-henry-fonda","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-the-wrong-man","tag-vera-miles"],"yoast_head":"\n