THE WRONG MAN
While there are elements of this movie's staging that are painfully contrived, it remains an endearing success less because of its adherence to the "true story" upon which it was based than because of the brilliant subtleties that I'm betting were pure artistic inspiration.
Before divulging the greatest of these master strokes, a bit of background is in order. Henry Fonda plays Manny, a bassist at the Stork Club. He's not especially bright, not a Lothario, not oozing charisma. He's just a nice guy with an unsteady wife and a couple young boys who adore him. The wife needs some dental work so Manny tries to borrow against her life insurance policy. While in the insurance office, the women employees decide he looks a lot like the man who robbed the office a few months back. They call the police. It turns out the cops believe one guy is responsible for that crime and several other robberies in the area. There's a line-up. Manny gets the finger. He goes to trial.
With those pesky plot details out of the way, we can look into the brilliant nuances that any other director--then or now--would never have considered. First, while Manny is on trial for crimes he did not commit, he looks around the courtroom and observes that the prosecutor is telling jokes, the bailiff is talking sports, and the jury clearly does not give a damn. The horror of what has been happening to him all along has been registering on Fonda's face throughout the movie. But when one of the idiot jurors stands up during testimony and says to the judge, "Your honor, do we really have to listen to this stuff?"--well, the look of horror on Fonda's face takes on a gleam of derision. It is at that moment, as the judge declares a mistrial, that we finally see some fight bubble up in Manny. In that instant we despise the system that has worked quite methodically to destroy his life and then to yawn at the outcome.
Nuance the second: Manny's wife, Rose (played with a combination of timid sexuality and complete comatosia by Vera Miles) goes off the deep-end from the strain of having her husband falsely accused. She didn't have to go crazy, but she did anyway. She did because that's exactly the kind of thing that would happen in a relationship where the family is living pay day to pay day, having to borrow here and there to take advantage of little extras, such as medical emergencies. Hitchcock could easily have omitted any reference to this part of the story, based on real events as it was. He chose to take it head on. It's a heart-breaker that redeems its sentiment by making us every bit as angry and disgusted as it does Manny.
While there are elements of this movie's staging that are painfully contrived, it remains an endearing success less because of its adherence to the "true story" upon which it was based than because of the brilliant subtleties that I'm betting were pure artistic inspiration.
Before divulging the greatest of these master strokes, a bit of background is in order. Henry Fonda plays Manny, a bassist at the Stork Club. He's not especially bright, not a Lothario, not oozing charisma. He's just a nice guy with an unsteady wife and a couple young boys who adore him. The wife needs some dental work so Manny tries to borrow against her life insurance policy. While in the insurance office, the women employees decide he looks a lot like the man who robbed the office a few months back. They call the police. It turns out the cops believe one guy is responsible for that crime and several other robberies in the area. There's a line-up. Manny gets the finger. He goes to trial.
With those pesky plot details out of the way, we can look into the brilliant nuances that any other director--then or now--would never have considered. First, while Manny is on trial for crimes he did not commit, he looks around the courtroom and observes that the prosecutor is telling jokes, the bailiff is talking sports, and the jury clearly does not give a damn. The horror of what has been happening to him all along has been registering on Fonda's face throughout the movie. But when one of the idiot jurors stands up during testimony and says to the judge, "Your honor, do we really have to listen to this stuff?"--well, the look of horror on Fonda's face takes on a gleam of derision. It is at that moment, as the judge declares a mistrial, that we finally see some fight bubble up in Manny. In that instant we despise the system that has worked quite methodically to destroy his life and then to yawn at the outcome.
Nuance the second: Manny's wife, Rose (played with a combination of timid sexuality and complete comatosia by Vera Miles) goes off the deep-end from the strain of having her husband falsely accused. She didn't have to go crazy, but she did anyway. She did because that's exactly the kind of thing that would happen in a relationship where the family is living pay day to pay day, having to borrow here and there to take advantage of little extras, such as medical emergencies. Hitchcock could easily have omitted any reference to this part of the story, based on real events as it was. He chose to take it head on. It's a heart-breaker that redeems its sentiment by making us every bit as angry and disgusted as it does Manny.
