Runtime: 105 minutes
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone, Charles Cooper
From: Warner Brothers
I watched this movie real late last night on Turner Classic Movies; it was a Hitchcock I had never seen before and it happens to be atypical for what he usually did. It was based on a true story and Hitch appears in the opening in silhouette explaining this fact, back when such claims in film were rare... and actually were not flagrant lies.
Henry Fonda is Manny Balestrero, a jazz musician in New York City (it's appropriate then that Bernard Hermann's score was different from his usual work, and had more jazzy elements) , and Vera Miles is his wife Rose. Manny goes to the office of the life insurance he has one day to take out a loan so his wife could have dental work... yeah, even back in the 50's going to the dentist was pretty damn expensive. Anyway, some of the employees incorrectly identify him as the person who had robbed them before. Circumstances led to him having to go to trial, which naturally put quite the strain on his family.
Sure, there are some stereotypical young boys who are stereotypical brats but otherwise I have little to complain about. The movie takes its time as it tells its tale; we see the expected police procedural stuff of Fonda having to do a writing sample, witnesses coming in to make an ID, and all the rest you'd expect from 1950's coppers. It helps that the leads were Fonda and Miles, as both do pretty well; in particular, it was easy to see from Fonda that the further this case went and he wasn't being cleared, the more panicked he became... as any of us would be.
The movie definitely still feels relevant today as due to various factors (including, yes, prejudice) there are still cases of false accusations being made and unfortunately, not everyone who goes to jail is truly guilty of the crime or crimes they were charged with. But that is a serious topic that should be discussed elsewhere instead of here. The movie on its own is a compelling tale where you hope that justice prevails in the end... I wouldn't dare spoil what happened in the film/what happened in real life.
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