An Innocent Man Has Nothing to Fear: Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956)

For as long as he can remember Manny Balestrero has been obsessed with mathematics. So much so that he views his entire existence as an equation and he holds everything in his life, from the beat he keeps with his band, to the way he plays the horses, to the time he arrives home to his wife and son as part of that very specific equation. A good man whose only real crime is always just seeming a step behind where he needs to be financially, Manny's life is irrevocably altered one night when he is accused of a serious crime that he swears up and down he is innocent of.


I’ve always considered Alfred Hitchcock’s unnerving real-life based 1956 film The Wrong Man to be one of his most truly terrifying. It’s also one of his most consistently brilliant, if often overlooked, works and it has lost none of its power to shock, frustrate and move the film fans that are able to fall under its spell all these years later. Lacking the overt visual audacity of works like Vertigo and North By Northwest, and the sheer entertainment value of To Catch a Thief and Rear Window, The Wrong Man is still a dazzling cinematic triumph that stands as one of Hitch’s harshest films in both style and substance.

Scripted (along with help from Angus MacPhail) by the great Maxwell Anderson, from his book The True Story of Christopher Emmanuel as well as a Herbert Brean article entitled “A Case of Identity”, The Wrong Man is one of the most direct and forceful films in Hitchcock’s canon. It must have seemed like a real out of nowhere moment for folks in the fifties expecting another Trouble with Harry or Dial M For Murder, as the bleak black and white The Wrong Man is a real about-face from those colorful breezy works. Stylistically and thematically, The Wrong Man seems like Hitchcock's tip of the hat to the Italian neo-realist works that had populated theaters throughout the fifties, and a prediction of The French New Wave that was getting ready to explode in the few years after its release.



Shot partially on location in upstate New York and in the heart of the city, along with some interior studio-based work, The Wrong Man is a bruising film from Hitchcock that has been called ‘documentary like’ but I see it as an extremely cinematic achievement filled with many, albeit deliberately muted, Hitchcockian trademarks that never let the viewer question just whose work it is they are watching. From the brooding Bernard Herrmann score (which has moments that predate Taxi Driver by a good twenty years) to Robert Burks’ beautiful but oppressive photography, The Wrong Man is far more than just the rare Hitchcockian docudrama many think of it as, and it deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as the man’s greatest achievements.



It’s mentioned on the excellent, if all too brief, featurette that accompanies The Wrong Man on DVD that the film is perhaps most surprising as it stands as one of Hitchcock’s most emotional works. What would have been a plodding courtroom drama in most hands is transformed into a real moving character study driven by Anderson and MacPhail’s incredibly smart script, Hitchcock’s legendary attention to detail and the wowing performances of Henry Fonda as the hapless Manny (a man whose real crime is that he fell victim to the conformity that haunted the fifties) and a smashing Vera Miles as his destroyed wife Rose. The Wrong Man steps away from where we think its going to go about halfway through and becomes an amazing, if quite devastating, story of a marriage nearly ripped apart by a case of mistaken identity.

I must say a special word for Vera Miles in this film. An always underestimated actress, Miles delivers a tour-de-force performance for Hitchcock in The Wrong Man and her role stands as one of the most memorable of the fifties. Fonda is terrific as well but Miles elevates the film to a heartbreaking greatness with her role as the guilt-ridden and doubtful Rose, and her work lingers for me days after viewing the film each time I sit down with it.


Probably about fifteen or so years ahead of its time, this paranoid classic would have felt right at home with works from the seventies like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, The Wrong Man failed to captivate too many folks upon its release in 1956 and it still hasn’t found the same kind of audience granted to other Hitchcock films from the period. It’s a haunting and singular work though dripping with style and substance that really does seem better and better with each passing year. If you haven’t seen it, or if it’s been awhile, seek it out immediately and you may find your order of favorite Hitchcock films forever altered.

Natalie Wood In Sex And The Single Girl (1964)

Natalie Wood has been criminally neglected on dvd since the format came into being, with only a handful of her best films available. Hopefully next year that will began to change as a rumored release is the box set, THE NATALIE WOOD COLLECTION. This box will feature a new special edition of SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, the new to disc INSIDE DAISY CLOVER and the delightful SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL.
Richard Quine's SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL is another one of those films that I first caught as a teenager on late night tv. Each week I would get out the Tv Guide and go through and circle all the films I wanted to tape. Natalie Wood has been a favorite for as long as I can remember and I was probably around 13 or 14 the first time I saw this film.
Quine was a remarkably underrated director who excelled at making romantic comedies with a style and flair that few could match in the fifties and sixties. He was also a master of of sly black comedies with films like THE NOTORIOUS LANDLADY and especially HOW TO MURDER YOUR WIFE. I think Quine has never quite received the recognition he deserves due to the fact that film buffs often look down upon the type of films he made and the American film period from 58-68 in general.
Quine brings his usual visual and stylistic flair to the zippy SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. A near two hour film that feels like the breeziest 90 minute comedy you can imagine highlighted by an incredible Neil Hefti score and sharp colorful cinematography by the legendary Charles Lang.
SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL started out life as a Helen Gurley Brown expose on...well...sex and the single girl. No less than five screenwriters worked on not so much as adapting Brown's book but making it a part of the film with Natalie Wood playing Brown herself.
Natalie Wood is joined by an incredible cast including Tony Curtis as the sleazy tabloid journalist Bob Weston who is out to prove she isn't quite the liberated woman she claims to be. Also featured are Hollywood legends Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall and Mel Ferrer. Two scene stealer's in what could have been just decorative roles are the very funny Fran Jeffries and Leslie Parrish. Fran Jeffries is particularly good and sings two songs on the highly collectible Hefti soundtrack, which is one of the snappiest of the sixties.
The whole cast is at the top of their game here. Tony Curtis was at his absolute comic peak in this film and he is incredibly sharp and funny. One of the film's most hilarious moments has Curtis parodying his role in SOME LIKE IT HOT with a barely maintaining Wood asking him, "Has anyone ever told you that you look like Jack Lemmon?"

Fonda and Bacall have many great scenes together as Curtis' constantly bickering friends, Frank and Sylvia. Fonda is very good here as a man equally obsessed and jaded by his profession, namely designing women's undergarments.
The film ultimately belongs to Natalie Wood. Looking absolutely radiant and as funny as hell. It's especially important to view this role in context, as she had just come off the extremely dramatic LOVE WITH THE PROPER STRANGER. The emotionally trouble Wood hopefully had a good time filming SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, she certainly appears to. Despite all that she was going through in her personal life Natalie gives a sly, winking performance that is among the best comedic turns of the sixties and it is a perfect reminder of how diverse she could be.

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL was released in 1964 to okay box office business and mixed reviews. Like many films from the sixties it seems caught between older values and the many changes that the culture was getting ready to go through. It couldn't have been made five years before or five years after, it is a quintessential film of its time.

Richard Quine would unfortunately not be able to deliver too many quality films after SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL. He sadly took his own life at the age of 69 after enduring a series of tragic and traumatic events. His work as a director needs more attention with films like BELL BOOK AND CANDLE and STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET being particularly great reminders of his importance and talent.
Tony Curtis would in the few years after SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL deliver some more comic gems, especially the great DON'T MAKE WAVES, before surprising everyone with his convincing turn in THE BOSTON STRANGLER. I hope he is on hand for the supplemental material on the upcoming SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL dvd.

We lost Natalie Wood in 1981 at the heartbreaking young age of 43. With SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS and LOVE WITH PROPER STRANGER serving as reminders to how great of a dramatic actress she was then SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL can be viewed as a testament to her comedic strengths. Deserving of a posthumous Oscar no one was ever loved more by the camera and her fans than Natalie.

SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL is currently out of print in any format. Used VHS and laserdisc copies sometimes pop up on Amazon and Ebay and a fine widescreen print plays pretty often on TCM. Long undervalued, this very charming, warm and funny comedy will hopefully find a new audience next year.