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 tells the tale of Manny Balestrero (Fonda), a musician in New York City at the Stork Club. An impoverished Manny and his wife Rose (Miles) hope to pay for her dental work with a loan against her insurance policy, but Manny so resembles an armed robber who had struck the insurance office twice, that the police are called when he applies for the loan, and several witnesses identify Manny as the robber. When Manny provides a handwriting sample, he nervously misspells the very same word as the true robber had done in his written demand in the crime. He is arrested and charged with the crime.

His attorney, Frank O'Connor (Anthony Quayle), builds a defense on mistaken identity. At the time of the first hold-up Manny was on vacation with his family. At the time of the second hold-up, Manny had a swollen jaw — something 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 since died, and the third cannot be found. The stress of all this devastates Rose, and drives her to depression and into an institution.

During the trial, a juror bored with the minutiae of one witness's testimony makes a remark which prompts the judge to declare a mistrial. While Manny is awaiting a second trial, the true robber exonerates Manny by getting arrested in the act of robbing a grocery store. Manny visits Rose at the sanatorium to share the good news, but she suffers still in apathy. A textual epilogue tells 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, who later became the district attorney of Queens County (New York City, New York), the president of the New York City Council and an appellate-court judge.

Rose Balestrero (1910-1982) died in Florida at the age of 72. [1] Manny (1909-1998) later moved to North Carolina, where he died at the age of 88 [2]

A Hitchcock cameo is typical of most of his films. In The Wrong Man he appears only in silhouette, just before the credits at the beginning of the film, where he tells a darkened studio that the story is true.

Many scenes were filmed in Jackson Heights, the neighborhood where Manny lived when he was accused. Most of the prison scenes were filmed among the convicts in a New York City prison in Queens. One of those inmates shouted to Henry Fonda, "What'd they get ya for, Henry?" as the actor is being taken to the constructed set of Manny's prison cell.

Bernard Herrmann composed the soundtrack, as he had 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, here primarily to represent Fonda's appearance as a musician in the nightclub scenes.

This was Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros. It completed a contract commitment that had begun with two films produced for Transatlantic Pictures and released by Warner Brothers: 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