- Hitchcock's heroes are often wrongfully accused, but few are as completely innocent as Christopher "Manny" Balestrero (Henry Fonda). Manny is a jazz musician who works late nights to support his wife, Rose (Vera Miles), and their two boys. Unfortunately, the family's financial state is precarious, and Rose's emerging dental problems will require yet another loan. When Manny tries to borrow against an insurance policy, however, he is mistaken by the women at the insurance office for a holdup man who has been targeting the neighborhood. Before he can even let Rose know what happened, Manny is whisked off to the police station to spend a lonely night in jail.
- Although one of the police officers repeatedly claims that "an innocent man has nothing to fear," Manny has plenty to worry about. In addition to his uncanny physical resemblance to the real crook, Manny's desperate financial situation, a dearth of living witnesses, and an unfortunate writing similarity all seem to indicate his guilt. As a result, nobody believes his story except for his family, his wife, and his honest but inexperienced defense attorney, Frank O'Connor (Anthony Quayle). As if things weren't bad enough, Rose's mental health takes an unexpected plunge, leaving her institutionalized as the trial approaches. It seems like Manny's ordeal may go on forever, unless of course the real crook is caught.
- The Wrong Man is an interesting and somewhat successful experiment in realism for Hitchcock. Instead of fleeing the police in a madcap series of chase sequences and ending up perched on top of a national monument (hey, it's been known to happen), Manny makes the unusually ordinary decision to hire a lawyer and await his trial. In fact, the film's unrelenting realism terrifies in a much more relatable way than the director's usual fare. This sort of thing really could happen to anybody and, as Hitchcock's introduction explains, really did happen to Manny Balestrero. That said, the film's faithfulness to the true story may also be its biggest flaw. The sudden deterioration of Rose's mental state seems completely absurd, even if it really did happen that way. As a result, all of her later scenes detract from what is otherwise a very compelling story. Fortunately, the film's excellent score and appropriately muted cinematography and direction (with the exception of one overly indulgent camera swirl) more than counterbalance this problem, making The Wrong Man a true story truly worth seeing.
- Hitchcock introduces the film, so he's pretty easy to spot.
- As mentioned, this is based on a true story.
