THE WRONG MAN (1956) ***1/2 Alfred Hitchcock portrays what most everyone considered a good legal system, at the time. True story, and it's as difficult to figure out who is in the wrong here as it is in the song “Who Killed Davey Moore?” The witnesses are trying to tell the truth, the cops are working with the information they're given, the representatives of the judicial system are conducting business well within the confines of their mandate...yet it all feels, entirely accurately, so horribly gone wrong. And all you have to do is give it a quick second glace-that's likely all you'll be able to handle-to realize that it has. It's an impossible film to make: who cares about one out of a billion criminal investigations gone wrong? After all, as a public defender once told me, “innocent people get convicted in this country every day.” It's the truth, and not just in this country. So it's the sad, dull, jaded sort of story without anyone particularly interesting in it: the protagonist doesn't commit fun or interesting crimes, the cops don't shoot anyone deserving or otherwise, the lawyers don't spring a surprise witness, the judge isn't in on it...just more bleeding heart stuff...if it wasn't for the performances and presentation. Henry Fonda, as a family man bereft even of extracurricular sexual encounters, couldn't be more compelling. He was born to play these embattled everyman parts, even though his range allowed him to do so many other things as well. His torment couldn't be more obvious and real, even as he battles, often successfully, to bury it beneath the veneer demanded by society. Hitchcock is perfectly understated-he knows that he has a story that will hold its own, and he doesn't distract from it. When he does go unorthodox it is to great effect. The signature faces are more than evident, Fonda again perfect, but often in sets or groups of three in order to highlight a psychic dynamic. Vera Miles' descent into madness could have been laughable or worse, were it not so perfectly portrayed. This film could not have been the masterpiece that it is in the absence of her performance. Anthony Quayle is the good kind of lawyer that we see too little of. Not that they don't exist-they do-but they're rarely enough seen in cinema, and even less in real life. Those two cute little girls, giggly bearers of bad news, grew up to be Tuesday Weld and Bonnie Franklin. Law enforcement is just this dull. Misapplication is at least this dangerous. And the psychological stakes cannot be exaggerated. On the other hand, can you imagine a vocation much more difficult than being an early-day psychiatrist? Derided avatars, brethren of charlatans and worse, bearing treasure maps difficult to decipher. Werner Klemperer gives us a hint that some of them knew what they were on to, and I have to say that poetic word tones such as “eclipse” give a much more real sense of the evils at play than do clinical ones such as “schizophrenia.” Long live Miranda !
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