The Wrong Man (1956)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

I’ve long said that we should be watch out if we are too stubborn in demanding justice, our Word of the Week, lest like we end up like Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and get more justice than we bargained for. But we should work for justice, and that means, if we are at all involved in the administration of justice, that we have to do proper diligence not only to find and to weigh evidence, but to set ourselves in the mind of any person we suspect of a crime. That is exceedingly difficult to do, and nothing in our shrill and hyperventilating politics makes it any easier. So today at Word and Song we ask the question, “What is it like to know that you’re innocent of a crime, but to have the Accuser pointing his finger at you?” Job knew what that was like, and that is why the ancient Fathers considered him to be a type, that is, a foreshadowing of Christ. Imagine that you have all your human frailties, too, so that the very accusation makes you look guilty, especially if people catch the notion from one to another, like influenza.

That’s the setup for our quietly terrifying Film of the Week, The Wrong Man (1956), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and, in a departure from his usual ways, featuring a script without people fleeing from international spies on the face of Mount Rushmore, or hanging by a handhold from the crown of the Statue of Liberty, or chewing gum nervously while a car with a corpse in it sinks into the mud of a lake. This one’s from an actual event, related in a book by Maxwell Anderson, The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero. The title character, Manny (Henry Fonda), is just a bass player at a New York club, who lives in an ordinary flat in Jackson Heights with his wife Rose (Vera Miles) and their two young sons. Their main problem is one that most of Hitch’s audience would have been familiar with: they don’t have a lot of money. But Rose has got impacted wisdom teeth, and the dentist says it will cost $300 to pull them, so Manny goes to his life insurance company with a copy of her policy, to see if he can borrow the money against it. While he’s there, the woman at the counter, clearly nervous, “recognizes” him as the very man who has held up the company twice before, for what we’d call petty cash. She has two of her fellow workers confirm her suspicion, and they call the police.

It’s a case of mistaken identity, and we know it well, but we also know that nobody else can know that. We see that the policemen make some procedural errors that grease the skids for identifying Manny as the robber: most notably, when two women from the insurance company are brought in to look over the “lineup,” and they are not separated from one another, so that the second woman, by far the more nervous of the two and the less reliable, “knows” which one to choose when it’s her turn to pick out the criminal. But the chief interrogator (Harold J. Stone) is not out for blood, and there is no suspicion that race or ethnicity inclines him against Manny. There’s even a handwriting test — actually it’s not cursive, but printing, which is far less dispositive — that seems to confirm the suspicion, as Manny, printing from dictation, makes the same spelling error that appears in a note the robber handed to the clerk. The only villain in this film is the real robber; and that shows how even good and decent people can get things badly wrong.

The power of this film lies in the performances of a very strong cast, especially Vera Miles as Rose Balestrero, who suffers a nervous breakdown before the trial begins and must be institutionalized. Miss Miles was always exceptional at showing the most ambiguous emotions with a glance aside, as if she were suddenly retreating into herself, into a place were no one else could go: see the final scene of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Hitchcock doesn’t need to say a lot in The Wrong Man. He He shows it: Manny’s face as he looks for the first time at the inside of a prison cell; Rose’s face as she becomes strangely impassive while they are discussing matters with their lawyer; the older of the two boys, who goes into his father’s bedroom on the night after Manny’s mother and brother have somehow posted bail for him, and says that he knows he’s innocent and that he’s the best father in the world. And watch closely for the rosary. Manny is a man of prayer. What he goes through is terrible, and it all but crushes him. Yet he prays.

---

Click on the still photo above to view “The Wrong Man” courtesy of our friends at Internet Archive.

---