Saturday, May 22, 2021
The Wrong Man
- Commentary: This movie was originally listed in the post Movies I've Seen, Do Not Own but Can't Forget. It was the first movie listed. As of today, I own it. Although I'll write more once I've watched the movie as my property (which I expect to do tonight), in the meantime I want to append what I wrote when I was jonesing for this movie:
I saw this movie, initially, with my mom, probably on TCM, since, during her life, we had a cable TV subscription. It's been over a decade since I've had access to TCM, but it hasn't been that long since I've seen this movie. It initially intrigued me because I have had dental problems all my life. As a non-dependent adult, some of those problems have been exacerbated because dental care is too expensive for me to afford. This is part of the initial reason why Henry Fonda's character in this movie ends up in a position to be mis-identified by the police. Although the rest of the movie is thoroughly engrossing, this minor fact is what drew me into watching this movie more than once. I was, frankly, gob-smacked that inability to afford dental care was a rampant problem in 1956! Everyone, in these days of rallying for Medicare for All, rants about the disgusting inequity of health care in the U.S. Why does no one, anywhere in the world, rant about the long-standing unaffordability of dental care?
There. That's done. More later.
Update 5/24/21: After having watched this movie last night, start to finish, I'm not sure I ever watched it in its entirety before. I discovered that I didn't remember quite a bit of it.
What a movie! The story is subtly told. Henry Fonda's performance is appropriately understated. For most of the movie he looks like Everyman in a Stupor, and that's not a dis, that's a high compliment, as, how else could one look as someone who is, indeed, "The Wrong Man"?!? Balestrero, as played by Fonda, when being confronted by this absurd accusation, never, ever looks like he finally "gets it". When he is pulled back into his normal life, as he is often throughout the film, he looks and acts and appears to think like a normal working guy with a wife and family. When he becomes The Wrongly Accused, he is perpetually dumbfounded. It is hard not to think that, if he had not had a normal, job-home-family life to consistently fall back into, he would have gone as crazy as his wife. The three main lighting contrasts, sharp-dark for the accusation scenes, brightly lit for the home and personal investigative scenes and a kind of anticipatory light gray for the courtroom and lawyer's office scenes, are revelatory in themselves. The scenes with his lawyer and in the courtroom are especially delicious because he is in a legal situation in which he has no way of helping himself, and this is dramatised beautifully.
I have to say, after watching it last night I think, if I had watched the movie before, it was likely snippets, during my companionship with my mother, never beginning to end, as I experienced it last night. It's impossible not to feel the jaws of a trap not set for Balestrero closing around Balestrero's soul.
I have to admit to some disbelief of Rose Balestrero's reaction, although, since it's the telling of a true story, I suppose her reaction and her subsequent predicament happened. Perhaps I was raised in the wrong era. I can not only not imagine myself reacting that way to my husband being wrongly accused and tried, I know no one for whom Rose Balestrero's behavior would emerge in any situation, let alone one like this. I wonder if that's one of the differences of women being raised in an environment that emphasizes domesticity versus my having been raised in an environment that emphasized women's full participation in society (despite the fact that this was only partially achieved).
Wonderful production, astonishing story (which the epilogue makes clear is, in fact, a true story), well acted, well staged, well directed, well produced, well done! This may not be the scariest movie Hitchcock ever made (although I'm willing to bet that, for people who have been through similar circumstances, it might be, and, as well, it packs the extra punch of being true), but it's way up there. Bravo, Alfred!
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Henry Fonda Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero Vera Miles Rose Balestrero Anthony Quayle Frank O'Connor Harold J. Stone Det. Lt. Bowers Charles Cooper Det. Matthews John Hildebrand Tomasini Esther Minciotti Mama Balestrero Doreen Lang Ann James Laurinda Barrett Constance Willis Norma Connolly Betty Todd Nehemiah Persoff Gene Conforti Lola D'Annunzio Olga Conforti Werner Klemperer Dr. Bannay Bonnie Franklin Young Girl Tuesday Weld Giggly Girl Harry Dean Stanton Dept. of Corrections Employee
Here's the Wikipedia write-up on the movie.
Release Date: 1956
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Labels: alfred-hitchcock, drama1, film-noir1, harry-dean-stanton, henry-fonda, melodramaC, mystery1, nehemiah-persoff, psychological1, suspense1, thriller1, tuesday-weld
