100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #120: The Wrong Man (1956)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Henry Fonda and Vera Miles

So far in this series, we’ve covered some of Alfred Hitchcock’s best known and beloved films. Honestly, Hitch could easily have taken ten spots on this list and not five; we’ve really only covered his Golden Age in the late 40s and 50s, missing some of his earlier flashes of genius (including The Lodger, The Lady Vanishes) and some later films so impactful they’re still staples of pop culture iconography (Psycho, The Birds). However, we are wrapping up the series with one of his lesser-known films, The Wrong Man. And it’s a real crime that it’s not as well-known as all the others, because in this author’s opinion it’s his very best.

The Wrong Man is monumental. I would venture to say that this is peak Hitchcock, an auteur so confident in his prowess that he can effortlessly create one of the most tense, thrilling, brilliantly paced stories of his entire career while at the same time hewing extremely closely to real life events. The story follows Manny Balestrero, a musician and family man who is falsely accused of a shocking series of armed robberies. True to his famous bomb-under-the-table philosophy of thrillers, Hitchcock is not preparing a twist ending nor does he ever throw Manny’s innocence into doubt. The tension and the thrill, and indeed the pathos of the whole story, comes from the fact that we know an innocent man is being railroaded, both by the cops but also seemingly by providence itself. Alibi after alibi falls through for Manny. People he needs to testify for him turn out to have died since the crimes. His wife cracks under the stress and goes insane and his own children start to wonder if he is a criminal. The further into the story we get, the more we realize what Hitchcock is doing in this picture. The Wrong Man is, indeed, an adaptation of the true story of Manny Balestrero (the only time Hitchcock adapted real-life events); but it’s also a much older, much more familiar story.

In The Wrong Man, Alfred Hitchcock has adapted the Book of Job.

You know this film will be special from the very first moment, when Hitchcock the auteur himself emerges, shrouded in darkness, and speaks directly to your soul.

The villain of the piece, or the director speaking directly to you?

Hitchcock was famous for including cameos in his picture, but this is the first and only time in one of his films that he gives himself a monologue. “This is Alfred Hitchcock speaking.” Like the Voice of God echoing from the Burning Bush. “This is a true story—every word of it. And yet it contains elements that are stranger than all of the fiction that has gone into many of the thrillers that I have made before.” Hitchcock himself gives us the interpretive key to his picture—it’s all true. Both on a factual level and on a philosophical (and indeed theological) level, Hitchcock is, for perhaps the only time in his career, laying before his audience the bare truth. This is why this film is so important in understanding Hitchcock, and I believe it has been deliberately overlooked so that secular critics can ignore the deep Catholic underpinnings of every serious movie the old man made. The Wrong Man is the key to understanding Hitchcock’s whole oeuvre. To watch The Wrong Man is to get the most direct insight we ever got into Hitchcock’s soul.

Having had his technicolor fun, Hitchcock returns to his black-and-white expressionist roots for the first time since I Confess, as if returning to an earlier era—an Old Testament if you will. Whenever Hitchcock wanted to make a deeply personal film, he returned to black and white. In some cases, this choice is because he wanted to highlight the stark evil of his material, such as in Strangers on a Train or Psycho. Most of the villains of his technicolor pieces (with the notable exception of Rope) commit understandable crimes, acting out of passion or greed or because they are foreign agents. But when a killer is truly disturbed (and disturbing) Hitch returned to black and white. However, there’s another motive for making this deliberate stylistic choice: the good man falsely accused. Hitchcock returned to black and white for I Confess, where a priest is accused of murder but cannot defend himself due to the seal of confession, and he returns again here, with a character even more wholly good that Fr. Michael Logan.

The story fits the stark mood brought on by Hitchcock’s moody expressionistic visuals. Manny Balestrero is mistakenly identified for robberies he did not commit, is imprisoned, and has his life destroyed. This innocent man is seemingly targeted by providence, with every single circumstance almost designed to make him look guilty. Manny and his wife Rose try very hard to extricate themselves from the situation, but every attempt they make to save themselves is fruitless. Rose breaks under the strain and enters a mental institution; Manny is tempted to despair. Rose's paranoia breaks her hope and her spirit in the same powerful moment; Hitchcock cracks the screen as if it were a mirror, a mirror straight into her soul. Curse God, and die.

Manny's good Italian mother has a different answer: "Pray for strength, Manny. My son, I beg you to pray!" As Manny prepares for work, his eyes light on a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and he does pray. And in his moment of prayer crying out from the depths, God saves him. At that very moment, the man who really committed the crimes is arrested while holding up another store and Manny is cleared of all charges. The film is deeply anti-Pelagian: all of Manny and Rose's works are in vain, but prayer and the outpouring of God's grace brings salvation to their family. Hitchcock famously disliked twist endings but this one (apparently true to life) is highly cathartic after what might be his most anxious thriller yet.

This ending is, perhaps, anti-climactic and even rather cheesy for the American secularist, which is why the film has not received its due acclaim as among Hitchcock’s greatest works. There’s even still melancholy here; Rose Balestrero never fully recovers from her mental breakdown. But the ending is fully in line with the themes of the film: our lives are not fully in our own hands. They are playthings of the supernatural. Circumstances may seem to conspire against us; perhaps the Lord has allowed Satan to test His good servant. No one in cinematic history was as clear-eyed about the potential for evil in every human heart as Alfred Hitchcock. But Hitchcock also knew the deeper magic: the Lord is in charge, and His overabundant loving Heart will not allow his innocent servant to be troubled forever. Hitchcock's very insistence that this was a true story brings extra power and drama to a subject Hitch returned to again and again in his career: guilt and innocence, crime and punishment, reticence and confession. And here, right at the peak of his career, he lays out his entire program, wrapped in his most masterful cinematic package, for all to see.