Date Seen: 5/22/17
Score: 5/5
DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
PRODUCER: Alfred Hitchcock
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
SCREENPLAY: Maxwell Anderson & Angus MacPhail
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Burks
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| Henry Fonda |
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| The opening title sequence |
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| Hitchcock's swirly camera- part noir, part French New Wave |
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| Henry Fonda and Vera Miles |
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| Vera Miles |
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| The famous superimposition of the wrong man and the right man... |
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| Alfred Hitchcock's opening monologue- the only cameo in which he directly addresses the audience |
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| Very Strangers On A Train, no? |
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| Vera Miles |
If Alfred Hitchcock himself did not appear at the beginning of the 1956 true crime thriller The Wrong Man, I'm not convinced that audiences would know that it was a film of his own making. The style of The Wrong Man is vastly different from the style that pervades many of Hitchcock's other films- most strikingly, as Robert Ebert assessed, it may be his "least fun film." I believe that part of this change in style, and lack of fun, must be attributed to the fact that it's a film based on actual events. Nothing wildly outlandish happens when compared to the grand canon of Hitchcock films- there is no scaling Mount Rushmore, falling off of Bell towers, impossible murder plots, and, most impressively, no pairing of Jimmy Stewart with a woman so vastly superior and and out of his league that the relationship logic defies all other confounding plot points.
I'm not entirely convinced that The Wrong Man is as accurate as it could be- Hitchcock himself promises at the beginning that the film is completely faithful to actual events- but as we all know, that's just not an option when it's been made by a man who hated critics concerned with plausibility so much that he created a specific term for them, the Plausibles. Yet the events of The Wrong Man really do seem possible- a case of mistaken identity that inalterably uproots an innocent man's life, tarnishes his marriage, drives his wife to madness, and severely complicates not only a man's financial position, but also his faith in the civic systems designed, supposedly, to protect him. I think that overall, the biggest stretch to the imagination is Henry Fonda being anything but white. The supposedly Cuban Fonda is cast beside a mother who looks like she's an extra in Scarface and a sister who barely speaks English. I think an interesting followup film might explore Fonda's adoption into a family of poor Hispanic immigrants.
I really, really loved this film. Being free of the usual Hitchcock extravagance, it effortlessly depicts a very human experience with the underlying understanding that it could happen to you. It's honestly the only Hitchcock film I've watched and thought, wow, that's actually a frightening possibility. Actually, it's the only Hitchcock film I've watched and thought, wow, that's actually a possibility. It also manages to accomplish an incredible feat: A protagonist who I can sympathize with. Amazing! Henry Fonda's Manny is one of three male Hitchcock protagonists I've ever felt bad for/understood/liked- the others, Roger Thornhill from North By Northwest and Ben McKenna from The Man Who Knew Too Much, were enough to make me feel compassion or empathy, but never made me tap into a really human place in my psyche. Fonda's performance is powerful, and I'm saying that with the full understanding that it's mostly just him giving the camera sad or confused puppy eyes. But it's effective!
Once you've seen her in The Wrong Man, it's beyond ridiculous that Vera Miles is best known for her role in Psycho (1960). Her performance in this earlier Hitchcock film is powerful and honest, and she demands complete attention in every scene she's in. Playing Manny's suffering wife, she sinks into a depression right in front of our eyes, and loses faith as quickly as we do. Her last words on camera, in the heartbreaking last scene of the film, directly before the eye-rolling final title card promising a happy ending, are simply "That's nice for you," giving her dry congratulations to Fonda's Manny, who has been freed from his literal prison, but remaining unable to escape her own mental one.
As we've discussed on this blog before, Hitchcock was very critical of the justice system. In his interviews with François Truffaut, he mentions a scarring childhood incident in which his father had him locked in a jail cell by a police officer after he misbehaved. Following this (stupidly unethical) event, Hitchcock lost all sympathy for the police, and his films do all they can to reflect this distaste. While Hitchcock was not opposed to glamorizing, or at least reveling in, crime, his heroes are almost always vigilantes who must defy a corrupt or unconcerned police force in order to save themselves and, sometimes, society. Some prime examples: The Lodger, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Strangers On A Train, etc. In Vertigo Hitchcock stresses his hatred for the police to the point of visually torturing a former police officer, Scottie Ferguson, putting him through a harrowing plot in which he is a pawn to be manipulated, crippling him with acrophobia, and proving his incompetence time and time again (not that I think he's necessarily the victim of that film, but that's neither here nor there).
The Wrong Man exposes the police system as wildly incompetent, and skewers the justice system from within. Hitchcock does not hold back in his attempt to portray the prisoner as the victim and the police officers as the perpetrators- a fascinating civic inversion that leaves the viewer, like the protagonist, feeling helpless in a society that promises to help them but continually fails.
It's worth briefly elaborating on the style of this film, from the film noir-esque shots to the jazzy, minimalist Hermann score. It's no wonder that The Wrong Man inspired both Jean-Luc Godard (who wrote his longest, most well-known piece of film criticism about the film) and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. The shots stand apart from other Hitchcock films, creating a unique suspense experience unlike any other, with the influence of film noir but the impression of Hitchcock. Watch it!
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