There are more examples, but what’s interesting are the differences between the two movies, starting with the basic style. One of my favorite movies is CALL NORTHSIDE 777 - I have the original movie poster on my wall. That film was one of several made in a documentary style, based on a true story, and following the facts of the case. It starred Hitchcock regular Jimmy Stewart as a newspaper reporter searching for the evidence that will prove a wrongly accused man on death row is innocent. One of the cool things in that movie is that it’s dramatic end highlights an early version of the FAX machine that gets the photo that proves Richard Conte’s innocence to the Governor moments before they charge up old sparky. This type of true story film was popular and Hitchcock gave it a shot with mixed results.
The film was shot in black & white at a time when color was standard, to add to the documentary feel. The camera is mostly locked down - not the fluid camera work we are used to in a Hitchcock film. And much of the movie was shot on the exact locations where the real scenes took place, including the famous Stork Club in New York City. Interiors were mostly shot in Los Angeles on soundstages, because it was freakin’ cold in New York and Hitchcock wanted to be someplace warm. But Hitchcock hired a production designer to build realistic sets that mirrored the real locations - dirty walls and all. This is a movie were things looked used, where wall switches are grimy, where people’s clothes are worn and sometimes wrinkled. The opposite of the gloss of NORTH BY NORTHWEST.
Hitch Appearance: Because this is a “serious” film, Hitchcock doesn’t make his standard appearance in the film, instead he introduces the story.
Nutshell: Blue collar musician Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) has a loving wife Rose (Vera Miles) and two great sons. He’s just paid off his last loan when his wife’s wisdom teeth need to be extracted - $300 he does not have. Seems like whenever they finally pay off a loan, something happens and they have to borrow again. Manny realizes they haven’t borrowed anything off Rose’s life insurance, maybe they can get $300? Manny goes to the Life Insurance company to find out how much he can get... and the woman behind the counter freaks a little, goes to talk to another employee - and asks her if Manny is the man who robbed her a few weeks ago? She cautiously looks, and says “yes”. All of the employees identify him as the robber. The woman behind the counter returns to tell Manny that he can borrow from the insurance, but his wife will have to come in herself... the moment Manny leaves, they call the police.
Manny is arrested in front of his apartment, taken to a series of robbery locations where he’s identified, booked at the police station... and his hell begins as all of the evidence points to him - even though he didn’t do it. They hire an inexpensive lawyer (the great Anthony Quayle) but how do you prove you didn’t do something? All of the witnesses identify him, all kind of circumstantial evidence points to him... and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that proves him innocent. Rose loses faith in the system, and even begins to wonder if Manny is guilty. Her depression turns to madness... and she is institutionalized. And the trial? Doesn’t go well. At one point, a juror stands up and asks if they have to go on with this, since Manny is obviously guilty. That leads to a mistrial - which means they have to start the hell all over again. Manny’s mother tells him to pray... and Manny prays... and across town, the real robber strikes again. He’s caught, almost by accident, and Manny is released... but his wife is still insane. Not exactly a happy ending.
Great Scenes: Just as the whole tone is different than NORTH BY NORTHWEST, the type of great scenes are different, too. THE WRONG MAN is a low key story about real people involved in very real problems, so many of the great scenes are dramatic in nature. The script was co-written by Maxwell Anderson, the playwright of KEY LARGO, THE BAD SEED, WHAT PRICE GLORY, and it’s often in the little scenes that we get the most emotional impact.
Fonda’s character is established on the subway, going home from work. Regular working guy. He has a newspaper and looks at an advert for a family car, a bank offering savings accounts, and finally the next day’s horse races - where he plays a little fantasy horse betting. He’s friendly to everyone. When he gets home, he’s the perfect dad - deals with a dustup between his two sons and comes up great way to resolve it - he will give them personal music lessons tomorrow. Later he tells his mom that he’ll drop by to see her the next day. His conversation with Rose about the cost of removing her wisdom teeth - and the struggles of treading water when the bills keep piling up - these quiet moments ring true.
One of the nice touches - when the police come to arrest him, they don’t know that Manny is his nickname, and call him by the wrong nickname.
When the police arrest Manny, we get his POV - the image of his wife though the window making dinner. The imposing looking police detectives on either side of him... and the cop behind the wheel watching him in the rearview mirror.
When they ask Manny to walk into a deli so that the husband and wife who run it can look him over - and it’s this uncomfortable catwalk with Manny as the model. It’s surreal - and when the husband and wife talk to him, it gets even weirder.
They run a really loose line up at the police station where the Insurance employees pick him out of the line of police detectives pretending to be other suspects. Again, it doesn’t seem real. You keep thinking when it’s all over they’ll take Manny home.
They fingerprint him. Black ink on his fingers. Marking him. They give him a paper towel, but it can’t remove all of the ink.
When he walks into the jail cell - the door slams.
When he’s taken to the courthouse, he’s handcuffed to a succession of other prisoners - he never looks up at their faces, only sees their hands and their shoes on the floor of the paddy wagon.
There’s a nice scene where Rose calls the lawyer, and gets his wife - and they talk wife-to-wife.
When Manny is released on bail, there is a really great scene where he reassures one of his sons that everything will be okay, and that sometimes bad things do happen to good people for no reason... but it will all work out at the end.
Later we get a great scene where Manny and Rose are discussing strategy with the lawyer - and it becomes obvious that Rose has completely given up. It’s a subtle scene, where the dialogue is about the trial, but the visual information is about Rose losing faith... and losing her mind.
After this, Manny and Rose have a quiet moment at home.
MANNY
The last few days, it seems like
you don’t care what happens to me
in the trial.
ROSE
Don’t you see? It doesn’t
do any good to care. No matter
what you do, they’ve got it
fixed so that it goes against
you. No matter how innocent you
are, or how hard you’ve tried,
they’ll find you guilty.
When we get into the courtroom, we see the trial from Manny’s POV - while his lawyer gets bogged down in mundane questions, Manny watches the bored jurors, the court stenographer, the people in the gallery, the bailiffs, all of the little moments. And we see how everyone is against him. These people’s lives are disrupted by jury duty because of him. When the juror finally asks why they have to keep doing this when Manny is obviously guilty, we get it. Manny even gets it.
Manny and his mother have a nice conversation about faith and prayer - and one of the strongest elements in this film is Manny’s faith. When he’s arrested and they remove all of his belongings from his pockets, they allow him to keep his rosary beads if he wants. He gladly takes them. He’s shown praying, and gripping his rosary beads in the courtroom. After the conversation with his mother, he prays...
The deli husband and wife are robbed again - and when the husband grabs the robber, he begs to be let go because he has a wife and kids at home.
Now we get the same loose line up at the police station, but this time Manny watches from down the hall as the Insurance company employees pick the robber out of the group of cops. And when the real robber walks past Manny, the great thing is that they have the same bone structure in their faces - so they look similar enough that you can easily see how an eyewitness might confuse them... yet they look different enough that they aren’t some sort of impossible identical strangers or something.
A final heartbreaker scene has Manny at the mental institution visiting Rose. He shows her the newspaper stories that say he’s innocent, but none of that breaks her out of the depression. Once you realize that at any time you can just be snatched off the street and accused of a crime you didn’t commit, and nothing can save you, re-entering that world is frightening. They have a final conversation... then Rose just closes down. Manny leaves...
Great Shots: Three great *shots* must be noted - when we follow Manny into his apartment at the beginning of the movie, it’s all one shot from outside through the interior of the house. When Manny is thrown in the cell, we get a great paranoia shot through the slot in the door. And the shot of Manny with the real robber super-imposed walking closer - until one face overlays the other, and we follow the real robber as Manny’s face fades out.
Sound Track: Bernard Herrmann, doing a very subdued score that riffs on the music that Manny plays at the Stork Club... and who is that bandleader at the Stork Club?
Hogan’s Heroes Connections: Look for Colonel Klink as the shrink his wife goes to! In the film before this, MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, Sergeant Schultz plays the assassination target!
This Hitchcock experiment into realism probably has more quiet character moments than any of his other films... but runs into trouble with its story. The idea of showing the true story from the wrongly accused man’s point of view doesn’t work very well. We end up with a passive protagonist - a man who sits in a cell or a courtroom and watches things happen to him. Manny is like a pinball being bounced around - never in control of the flippers. Though it’s common in a thriller to have a protagonist who is on the run - reacting to outside forces, usually by Act 3 the protagonist stops running, turns and fights. Usually turning the tables on the villain and taking control of the situation - often even turning the villain’s plan against the villain. In NORTH BY NORTHWEST Roger escapes the hospital and goes to save the woman he loves - becoming a man of action. The end of that film would have been better if Roger had been more actively involved in the capture of Van Damm and the death of Leonard. But in THE WRONG MAN Manny does *nothing* to change his fate at the end. He continues to be passive until the end.
Most protagonists in movies are reacting to an event, but that doesn’t make them passive. Most stories are *not* character drive, they are plot driven. The protagonist doesn’t just decide to do something, usually an outside event forces the protagonist to do something... but they do something. (The outside event drives the story, whether it is a meteor headed toward Earth or the funeral of a college friend.) There is a difference between *Passive Reaction* and *Active Reaction*. When the Two Assassins get into the elevator with Roger and his mother, he doesn’t just allow them to kill him... he figures out a way to escape and runs like hell. That’s an *Active Reaction*. Here, Manny just accepts whatever happens to him, and does nothing. He’s completely passive. This is in direct violation of Newton’s 3rd Law - which makes it unnatural... and whether the audience *consciously* understands that the protagonist is doing nothing to help themselves or it’s *subconscious* - they know this isn’t what people are supposed to do in this situation. When someone is drowning, they try to tread water and they yell... they don’t just allow themselves to sink. (Even though, I’ll bet some people *have* done that - it’s still “unnatural”.) We don’t want the protagonist to do nothing, and we lose respect for a protagonist who puts their fate in the hands of others. Sure, we may do that in real life, but that’s not how we’re programmed. We were designed for self preservation.
When a character isn’t involved in their own survival, and seems *disinterested* in their own survival, the audience loses identification with them. Though Manny and Rose have a couple of scenes where they try to track down an alibi for the time of one of the robberies, when they hit a dead end, they just give up completely... and Manny puts his fate in the hands of the lawyer. He becomes passive. He just lives his life and lets the lawyer do all of the work to keep Manny out of prison for the rest of his life. If you find that your protagonist is not involved in the solution to their conflict - if other characters end up in charge of your hero’s fate - you need to find ways to *involve them* and find the way for them to resolve their conflict... or maybe find another character to be the protagonist. Someone more involved in the outcome of the story.
In NORTHSIDE 777 the story is told from the POV of the reporter racing to save the innocent man - so the story all depends on the actions of the protagonist. That is an exciting story, because the resolution of the story is entirely in the hands of the protagonist. In WRONG MAN, the story depends on the actions of other characters - and it ends up being one of the Detectives who notices the similarities between the real robber and Manny who gets the charges dropped. Manny isn’t involved in the resolution to his conflict at all - he’s just a bystander. What if the detective hadn’t noticed the similarities? Manny would be behind bars! Manny isn’t involved in his own story! He just goes with the flow. Things happen to him. This makes the story seem flat and uninvolving... which is not what you want when you already have a documentary just-the-facts style. Nice little dramatic moments, but the story just lays there.
- Bill
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