The Wrong Man
Film poster
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by	Maxwell Anderson Angus MacPhail
Story by	Maxwell Anderson
Produced by	Alfred Hitchcock
Starring	Henry Fonda Vera Miles Anthony Quayle Harold Stone
Cinematography	Robert Burks
Edited by	George Tomasini
Music by	Bernard Herrmann
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	December 22, 1956 (U.S.)
Running time	105 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$1,200,000
Box office	US$2,000,000

The Wrong Man is a 1956 film by Alfred Hitchcock which stars Henry Fonda and Vera Miles.^[1][2] The film was drawn from the true story of an innocent man charged with a crime, as described in the book, The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel Balestrero by Maxwell Anderson, and in the magazine article, "A Case of Identity" (Life magazine, June 29, 1953) by Herbert Brean.^[3]

It was one of the few Hitchcock made from true stories, and one of his few where the plot stayed the same.

The Wrong Man had a notable effect on two significant directors: it prompted Jean-Luc Godard's longest piece of written criticism, and affected Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.^[4]

The film examines the experience of Manny Balestrero (Fonda) who works as a musician in the Stork Club, a nightclub in New York City. Manny and Rose (Miles), his wife, have very little money. When Rose needs some dental work, Manny attempts to borrow on her insurance policy at the insurance office. Unfortunately, he bears a resemblance to an armed robber who had held up the office twice before, so the police are called. Manny is identified by several witnesses and, when providing a handwriting sample, he nervously misspells a word that was also misspelled on the robbery note. He is arrested and charged with the crime.

His defense attorney, Frank O'Connor (Anthony Quayle), builds a case based on mistaken identity. At the time of the first hold-up Manny was away on vacation with his family. At the time of the second hold-up, Manny had a swollen jaw - a fact which the insurance-office employee would have noticed if Manny had been the robber. Manny and Rose look for three witnesses to his presence at the vacation hotel on the day of the hold-up, but two have died in the intervening months and the third can not be found. The stress of all this has a devastating effect on Rose who slowly descends into depression and is ultimately institutionalized.

During the trial, a juror bored with the minutiae of one witness's testimony makes a remark which prompts the judge to grant a mistrial. While Manny is awaiting re-trial, the real robber is arrested in the act of robbing a grocery store and Manny is exonerated. He visits Rose at the sanatorium to tell her the good news but she remains in an apathetic state. The film closes with a textual epilogue that reveals that two years later Rose recovered and the family moved to Florida.

The real O'Connor (1909–1992) was a New York State Senator at the time of the trial. He went on to become district attorney of Queens County (New York City, New York), president of the New York City Council and an appellate-court judge.

Manny Balestrero (1909-1998) later moved to North Carolina where he died, aged 88 [1]; his wife Rose (1910-1982) died in Florida aged 72 [2].

Hitchcock's cameo is a signature occurrence in most of his films. In The Wrong Man he can be seen (at the beginning of the film before the credits) in silhouette standing in a darkened studio as he tells the audience the film is a true story.

Many scenes were filmed in Jackson Heights, the neighborhood where Manny lived when he was accused. Most of the prison scenes were filmed in a City Prison in Queens, New York. One of the actual inmates shouts "What'd they get ya for, Henry?" while Manny (Henry Fonda) is being taken to his cell, which was a constructed set.

The film was scored by Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the soundtracks for all of Hitchcock's films from The Trouble with Harry (1955) through Marnie (1964). It is one of the most subdued scores Herrmann ever wrote, and one of the few he composed with some jazz elements, primarily to represent Fonda's appearance as a musician in the nightclub scenes.

This was the final film that Hitchcock made for Warner Bros., completing a contract commitment that had begun with two films produced for Transatlantic Pictures and released by Warner Bros. in the late 1940s, Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949), his first two films in Technicolor. After The Wrong Man, Hitchcock returned to Paramount Pictures.

• Henry Fonda as Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero
• Vera Miles as Rose Balestrero
• Anthony Quayle as Frank O'Connor
• Harold J. Stone as Jack Lee

The Rotten Tomatoes approval rating is currently 89%.

• Trial movies

• Template:Amg movie
• The Wrong Man at IMDb
• The Wrong Man at the TCM Movie Database
• DVD Review Review of the film at Vista Records
• The Wrong Man Eyegate Gallery
• Slant magazine review of film