A look back at this day in film history....... Dec. 23, 1956 THE WRONG MAN OPENS: This is Alfred Hitchcock speaking. In the past, I have given you many kinds of suspense pictures. But this time, I would like you to see a different one. The difference lies in the fact that this is a true story, every word of it. And yet it contains elements that are stranger than all the fiction that has gone into many of the thrillers that Ive made before. These were the opening words of the great suspense masters 1956 film, The Wrong Man, which opened December 23. Coming after a string of jauntier, more commercial films (To Catch a Thief, Dial M for Murder), The Wrong Man, filmed in black-and-white, is based on a real court case that took place in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, and starred Henry Fonda as a jazz musician who is psychologically assaulted when hes accused of perpetrating a year-old office theft. The rub is that he seems guilty, and watching the system grind him down — and cause his wife to drift into near-psychosis — is as harrowing as any chase scene in another Hitchcock film. Today, the film is recognized as an early work in a genre that includes not only fictional works like The Fugitive but also documentaries like Errol Morriss The Thin Blue Line and TV series like American Justice and even one entitled The Wrong Man itself — all works in which drama is created from the knowledge that the legal system we trust is deeply fallible.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 02:00:40 +0000