The Wrong Man

So imagine this, one day you're coming home from work only to have two police detectives stop you and take you to the precinct. They've got eyewitnesses who can put you at the scene of several different hold-ups and even pick you out of a line-up. Your handwriting sample is even eerily similar to the note left at the crime scene, and your alibi doesn't hold up. Everything, and so it seems everyone, is against your innocence. What do you do?

That's the question facing Christopher Emmanuel 'Manny' Balestrero (Henry Fonda) in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man from 1956. Manny is the typical husband who with his wife Rose (Vera Miles) has a nice little life with their two kids and house. Manny works as a bass player at a local club at nights and while he doesn't pull in a ton of money, his family is happy and well cared for even if money isn't always readily available. One day, he does to the insurance agent to see how much he can borrow so Rose can have her wisdom teeth removed.

So starts the process as the tellers at the agency think he's the man who held them up several months before. The police get involved and before you know it, Manny is looking at serious jailtime for a handful of stickups that he swears he was not a part of. But even with his supposed innocence, the evidence starts to build up making the viewer wonder if maybe he is guilty. Who better to star in that part than Henry Fonda? Other than his shocking portrayal of a villain in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, I can't think of another movie where Fonda was the bad guy. He's Joe America so how could he be responsible for all these accusations?

Director Alfred Hitchcock is dealing here with a story and circumstance that he perfected over the years; that of a man thrust into a situation where he doesn't always know what is going on and must find a way to right the ship. Think of The Man Who Knew Too Much or North by Northwest as two other examples. He excelled with stories like this and keeps the viewer guessing. Hints are dropped throughout that maybe Manny did go through with the crimes. Could he have done it? After all, we've just met the guy and at least in my case, made the assumption that Fonda, in character or not, couldn't have been a stick-up artist.

By the end of the movie though, everything is just wrapped up too nicely with a little bow on top to cap it off. I don't know what I was expecting from the ending, maybe a twist like so many of Hitchcock's other films, but it doesn't reveal itself here. I guess the enjoyment is supposed to come from the build-up as the evidence mounts against Manny, and the effect it has on his wife Rose who starts to unravel under all the pressure. Speaking of that, Miles delivers a strong performance as Rose, a sort of common housewife who just wants what is best for her family and starts to blame herself for all their problems.

Other names in the cast include Anthony Quayle as Frank O'Connor, Manny's lawyer, and Harold J. Stone and Charles Coooper as the two lead detectives on the case who want to believe Manny's claims of innocence even when nothing seems to point in that direction.

I wanted to like The Wrong Man more, and parts are very good, but the ending just doesn't do it for me. Hitchcock opens the film with some on-screen narration, saying it's a true story so that the ending is what happened in real life. But for me, I guess having seen enough other Hitchcock movies I had the wool pulled over my eyes waiting for the big reveal, the big twist that never comes. Still a strong effort from Hitchcock thanks to the performances of Fonda and Miles, but it's not top tier Hitchcock thriller.

The Wrong Man <----trailer (1956): ** 1/2 /****