The Wrong Man (1956)

(On Cable TV, February 2020) It’s paradoxical yet inevitable that while “the wrong man at the wrong place” ends up being a perfectly valid plot description for much of director Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre, The Wrong Man finds a true story that perfectly fits this description and somehow manages to produce something less involving than pure fiction. A dramatized depiction of real-life events, this is a movie that stars Henry Fonda as an innocent man accused of robbery through bad luck and happenstance. Given its status as a true story (as ponderously announced on camera by Hitchcock himself in the film’s first moments), it’s no surprise if The Wrong Man goes for more of a more realistic atmosphere than many of Hitchcock’s contemporary works. It doesn’t quite feel like one of his movies—the black humour is toned down, the stylistic camera tricks are mostly absent and the return to black-and-white here feels like an accidental rehearsal for Psycho than anything else. The inclusion of a mental health breakdown (toned down from true events) is also a bit of a downer that carries through the end credits. Still, one thing that The Wrong Man does get right is the casting of likable everyman Henry Fonda in the lead, equally able as other heroes in Hitchcock’s filmography. It still works today, but more like an attempt at true-crime realism than a Hitchcockian thriller by itself. But then again, reality is usually duller than fiction.