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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good character study, 15 Nov 2008
Once again Hitchcock surprises us by making a movie that is completely different from the other better known films he made in this era. Theres no Hollywood action and very little of his trademark suspense in this movie. Its almost a procedural Police movie with a bit of court room drama thrown in for good measure. Above all this though is how the relationship between a man and wife is stretched beyond the limit by a simple misidentification.
Henry Fonda looks suitably haunted and Vera Miles as his wife Rose perhaps even more so. What Hitchcock portrays so well in this movie is the reality of an innocent person being prosecuted for a crime he did not commit.
This is also part of an excellent boxed set which I strongly recommend. Sure this isn't a classic Hitchcock but even an average Hitchcock is much better than most other filmmakers attempts.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hitchcock's "true story" lacks suspense, 16 Aug 2008
The idea of "The Wrong Man" is something that permeates through a number of Hitchock films although this can be said to be unique in his cannon, based as it is so closely on a real life event.
Henry Fonda (if you've seen him in one movie, you probably know what to expect from him here) stars as Manny Balestero, a man who is falsely identified as a petty thief who has held up an insurance office. It's as blatant as it could be from the beginning that he didn't do it but whilst family and, to some extent, friends rally around him, the police stoically set about getting him convicted.
Your opinion of Fonda in the role obviously greatly effects your view on the movie. Some will find his passive character (there is no outburst upon his arrest, or even later when things look even bleaker) off-putting, but then Hitchcock never meant the character to be proactive as that would have changed the emphasis of the film. The film is not about Manny's struggle to prove his innocence as much as it is about the system failing an honest man, feelings a million miles away from Hitchcock's classic "wrong man" movies such as North By Northwest.
Fonda is fine in his role, and Vera Miles is effective as his wife, overcome by the struggle that ensues.
Whilst somewhat in a documentary tone, Hitchock has his one speaking part in his movies introducing the piece, there are certain moments of suspense and the scene where the insurance office workers share their suspicion of Manny with each other is one stand out point. But to put things into perspective, few would name this as one of his standout films and it is less likely to appeal to casual film fans looking for 100 minutes of entertainment than it is to Hitchcock afficionado's.
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4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hitchcock in low-key but intense form, 24 July 2009
This is Hitchcock on a small scale with fireworks kept strictly in check, but still showing other directors how it's done by his attention to detail.
It seems likely that his experience aged 5 lies at the bottom of this choice of material, the story of an ordinary man wrongly accused of robbery. Hitch's father, exasperated with the boy one day, got the local police inspector (a friend) to stick him in a cell for 5 minutes to teach him a lesson (explains where Hitch got his bizarre sense of humour) and the experience and a fear of the police remained with him for life. Hitch's appearence in the preamble, in silhouette and bathed in a pool of light and shadow, directly addressing his audience, highlights his own intense involvement in the material.
The first half is a police procedural, along the lines of He Walked by Night (Richard Basehart, 1948) or T-Men (1947) during which we tread the road to disaster with Henry Fonda. His arrest is signalled a long way out, but the inexorably slow pace squeezes tension amounting to dread out of what must follow. The spotlight then shifts sideways to Vera Miles as Fonda's wife; this is an effective development as the film opens out a little but still retains its air of claustrophobia, and Fonda's helpless participation in his nightmare intensifies as fate, chance or coincidence conspires to bring the two of them down. The downbeat ending is just right.
While the direction is, for Hitchcock, unshowy, there are some great effects: at the very start, Fonda leaves the nightclub after work and steps onto the pavement just as two policemen on the beat take step with him as if already arresting him. On the tube he opens his paper and the camera swoops menacingly onto an advert showing a happy family with two boys just like his own; the camera indicating his confusion in his cell as it whirls round his face as though on a ferris wheel; Fonda travelling by police van to court, with the lattice ironwork of Brooklyn Bridge reflecting stark light and shade on the road, and this scene shifts to a shot of police vans lined up outside the courthouse, white roofs on dark road - Hitchcock perhaps suggesting that normality/chaos and innocence/guilt are the opposite sides of a wafer-thin coin. The helplessness experienced by Fonda as he looks despairingly about him during the trial as his counsel questions a witness and finds indifference to his plight everywhere - the prosecutor laughing, the judge bored, another witness applying lipstick, two ushers gossiping, jurors inattentive or downright hostile.
Henry Fonda is terrific in the main role. His passivity is raised to the level of almost heroic suffering thanks to the intensity of his screen presence. Vera Miles, who was simultaneously making scenes for John Ford's The Searchers, is also excellent as his guilt-ridden wife. Add in a fine, muted musical score, all clarinets, oboes and bassoons from Bernard Herrmann, and you have a fine film, just below the level of Hitchcock's great masterpieces.
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