The Wrong Man (1956)

Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 film The Wrong Man is ultimately about how the universe is governed by the orders of neither justice nor reason. By telling the true story of a man who, by sheer chance, is charged with a crime that he did not commit, and the prolonged state of mental illness that the helplessness of the whole situation inflicts upon his wife, the film presents the argument that the realization of this knowledge can be equally as harmful to unsuspecting people as the randomness of life itself. Hitchcock constructs an ending in which a happy resolution is but an endnote, and by doing so, places a significant emphasis on the profundity of this truth, which is reinforced by the many aspects of the film that produce a strong sense of realism. The result is easily one of the most strikingly demoralizing pictures in Hitchcock's filmography.

Several elements that are found in most of Hitchcock's films are present in The Wrong Man. Surely the most prevalent is the idea of a single, arbitrary incident happening to an ordinary person, and that person's life being overtaken by the consequences of such event, which is seen in Manny's being mistaken for an actual criminal, and the debacle that ensues as a result of the shoddy investigative work done by a slew of incompetent police officers—yet another Hitchcock trademark. As is generally the case, these aspects effect a great deal of increased unease among the audience as the occurrences portrayed on-screen become all the more plausible in the real world. Even Hitchcock's signature cameo—a brief but pronounced materialization in silhouette before even the opening credits, accompanied by the acknowledgement that the story that is about to be presented is entirely true—works to the end of producing a heightened sense of realism that makes The Wrong Man more intensely disconcerting, both by what he says and by the absence of his potentially distracting appearance at some other point throughout the film.

To further put-off his audience, Hitchcock tones down two other hallmarks of his films: the use of point-of-view camera shots in an attempt to attach viewers to one or more characters, and the intense Bernard Herrmann score. While both of these are undeniably present—shots from the point-of-view of Manny are used several times, especially during key moments such as when he is being fingerprinted at the police station and when a witness points him out for the jury at trial; and the score kicks in immediately at the start of the opening credits—neither are used as intrusively as is commonplace Hitchcock's films. Because Manny is a double bassist at the Stork Club, Herrmann's mostly subdued jazzy compositions feel appropriate to the film and the audience is not likely to be distracted by them. In all of these cases, Hitchcock clearly takes a step back and lets the narrative play out unvarnished.

The Hitchcockian motif of mirrors also has its place within The Wrong Man, and with multiple purposes. As tensions arise between Rose and Manny, elevated by the former's suggesting that the latter might, in fact, be guilty of the crimes he is charged with, Rose picks up a hairbrush and strikes Manny on the forehead with it. During the scuffle, the mirror on the table next to them cracks roughly down the middle and there is a briefly sustained shot of Manny's reaction, split into two by the broken mirror. In this instance, the mirror reinforces the apparent conflict between the two that has just reached its climax. However, the broken mirror finds another meaning behind yet another Hitchcock favorite: the use of doubles. The audience sees the two separate halves of Manny's face, which signifies his relation to the actual robber who is not revealed until later in the film, but who is assumed to present a similar appearance to Manny himself.

The revelation of what the robber really does look like occurs within another cinematic sequence of note. Manny slowly starts falling into the dangerous, psychotic path set by Rose, as he loses his temper with his mother, who insists that he pray more. When he does so, an exceptionally lengthy fade begins, with Manny's face superimposed over the image of a man dressed in a long overcoat and a hat (just as Manny is seen earlier in the film) walking down the sidewalk at night. The unknown man continues toward the camera as Manny continues praying, until finally their faces match-up in size and placement, and the image of Manny's face disappears completely. This technique is another example of doubles and the problems that they can cause. However, the use of this long fade also provides the audience with a very clear comparison between the two men, and it is plain to see that, though they are relatively similar in appearance, they are also not identical and are easily distinguishable, which adds to the feeling that the entire fiasco is even more random and even less warranted.

The flailing sense of order that Manny experiences is conveyed through possibly the most expressionist element of The Wrong Man: the wild movements of the camera when he is first placed inside a jail cell. The sequence comes just after the detectives have convinced themselves that Manny is guilty based on questionable evidence. As evinced by the use of Hitchcock's characteristic bird's-eye view shot, heralding the “point of no return” in the plot, Manny's fate is taking a turn for the worse as the police no longer claim to be overseeing his case objectively. At the moment that Manny is taken to his cell, his face communicates a sense of shock, disbelief, and utter dismay; his typical upbeat disposition is no longer present. Shots of his nervous feet are interlaced with those of his distressed face as he paces back-and-forth across his cell with overwhelming anxiety. This continues for a moment until he stops pacing and leans his body and the back of his head against the wall. He closes his eyes slowly and the camera then begins moving in an irregular sphere with increasing rapidity. Because Manny's eyes are closed, the shot could not be taken from his point-of-view, but it may as well have been, as this sickening, thrashing motion is certainly what he sees and feels when he closes his eyes.

Beyond physical terms, the extreme kinetic movement of the camera also expresses just how chaotic the world around Manny is, in which a man can do nothing wrong, tell only the truth, and still be wrongly accused by supposedly helpful authority figures. Though he never exactly held the reins of his detainment, he has now indubitably lost control of his situation, and is unable to stop even his own mind from spinning, as the levity of his predicament gets the best of him. Manny's realization that he no longer has authority over his own fate is accompanied by the recognition that he has never really had such power. While the method here does not necessarily culminate in spectator sympathy with Manny, it strongly encourages it.

Hitchcock also hopes to attach the audience to Manny and incite maximum emotional investment in his outcome by making his character quite possibly one of the nicest, most genuine, and most likeable figures in cinema history. He is hard-working, honest, optimistic, kind, and he loves his family dearly, and knowing that effects a very deep sense of sorrow within the audience as he struggles through this difficult time in his life. It also makes the ending of The Wrong Man especially unnerving. Because moviegoers are accustomed to the definitely positive outcome of most motion pictures, it is hard to help but think that the news of Manny's being cleared by the police will be the sure cure for Rose's depressive state. When this assumption does not come to fruition, the viewer is neither rewarded nor satisfied. In this way, Hitchcock in manipulating audience expectations, as he is prone to do in his works.

Though the ending of The Wrong Man is ultimately a positive one, in that the text that appears on the screen just before the credits roll announces that Rose was eventually cured and that the Balestrero family lives happily in Florida, the manner in which this resolution is presented is not in a way that an audience finds gratifying. The aforementioned text appears on the screen for no more than mere seconds, while several minutes are spent dwelling upon Rose's resilience to hope and her rejection of Manny after his release. The reason Hitchcock chooses to use such means of depicting the story's resolution is not only to tamper with audience assumptions, but also to hammer home the fact that the Balestrero family remained in this fractured state for two full years—years that are important in the development of their two children—before Rose escaped from the grips of the nightmare in which she was living. The cinematic attention paid to Rose's miserable condition also highlights the lasting emotional and psychological effects that are often manifested when one comes to the true—however unfortunate and disheartening—realization that so severely paralyzed her with fear: that she, along with everyone else, is simply at the mercy of the universe.

The 1956 feature The Wrong Man finds Hitchcock making several departures from his usual modus operandi. While it does include several of the motifs that are found throughout his body of work, even those are applied differently and, in some cases, for slightly different effect. As he directly states in his cameo at the very beginning of the film, the notion of dramatically reproducing a true story is also a new concept. Most importantly, though, The Wrong Man shows Hitchcock truly pushing the envelope of audience manipulation: he takes this true story that eventually resolved positively and presents it in a manner that not only plays on the audience's expectations of how narratives are supposed to work, but also creates a rather unsatisfying and wholly unsettling conclusion so tangible and plausible that The Wrong Man becomes truly one of his most frightening films.