There are few places we vol­un­teer and places we don’t. If some­one claps/whistles/yells in a crowd, we tend to vol­un­teer our­selves ‘Is it for me?’. In some other places, we don’t vol­un­teer even if they point on us specif­i­cally. Like the ques­tions period in a pre­sen­ta­tion, magi­cian ask­ing us to come on stage, traf­fic police sidelin­ing your vehi­cle etc., — where the sequences are highly unpre­dictable. Hos­pi­tal and police sta­tion are the places where we can’t tol­er­ate the mis­taken or swapped identities :)

One of the com­mon fac­tors in com­edy and dou­ble action films is mis­taken iden­tity. Swap­ping roles may not always lead to an enjoy­able expe­ri­ence — it may be worse too. One such true inci­dent in the life of a per­son and Alfred Hitch­cock has exper­i­mented the inci­dent on screen. As he says in his intro­duc­tion speech, the sus­pense what he has offered this time, is truly different.

 The wrong man

 A com­mon fam­ily man is sud­denly arrested by police and he finds it very dif­fi­cult to prove his inno­cence. It’s a sim­ple but emo­tion­ally pow­er­ful story.

 View

 A famous n repeated note: Alfred Hitch­cock was held in a police sta­tion for a mis­take when he was at 5, play­fully by his father’s police friend. Though it was 5 mins, it haunted him and affected him. So as to his films. This left a great impact on Hitch­cock devel­op­ing a fear on police n prison and his char­ac­ters reflect this fear.

 The story is close to a com­mon man’s rou­tine life — some of us are aller­gic to even a minor change in our course [ miss­ing the train might col­lapse us :) ]. That’s what hap­pens to Balestrero — a sim­ple musi­cian work­ing in NY Stork club [ night shifts !! ]. He car­ries the sick­ness of his job [ though it’s music profession ]

 The pro­tag­o­nist makes a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence in the story. For exam­ple, if you take the prison movies, the char­ac­ters respond dif­fer­ently to the jail sit­u­a­tion. DIf­fer­ent charc­ters in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions — Escape from Alca­traz, Shaw­shank redemp­tion, Green mile, Coun­ter­feit­ers, etc., the cast­ing makes the dif­fer­ence — exactly. That’s the main rea­son Hitch­cock has selected Henry Fonda for the char­ac­ter of a poor, con­fused com­mon fam­ily man [ Fam­ily means con­fu­sion actu­ally ha..ha ]

 It’s very seri­ous so that Hitch didn’t make his cameo appear­ance, which he didn’t want to divert or dilute the mood. The open­ing music is a per­fect match for the movie — check the cello sound per­fectly match­ing for the haunt­ing steps..This film shows the NY in 1956 — which I love to see on screen [ Queens bridge, Subway,5th avenue ]. Maxwell Ander­son is a play writer — an impres­sive script. Hitch­cock story boarded every shot of the movie — this reduces the actual shoot­ing footage [ not like our Tamil film direc­tors who waste money in raw film ].

 The wife’s char­ac­ter was an inter­est­ing por­trayal who feels guilty for her husband’s prob­lems. A sub­tle and bril­liant per­for­mance by Vera miles. The good scenes are  :  the scene inside a cell and the unin­ter­est­ing activ­i­ties of peo­ple dur­ing his trial. That explains the oth­ers inter­est in a person’s prob­lem. Inter­est­ingly every indoor shot was made in set — fan­tas­tic art­work.  The dis­solv­ing shots of a reli­gious photo towards the cli­max were too good.

 Hermann’s back­ground score was care­fully crafted and effec­tively used in this film. A touch­ing n unusual movie from Alfred Hitch­cock, which fas­ci­nated me.

:)

Toto

Related Posts B

1. Big Fish — Story-teller’s story
2. Ver­tigo — Watch it Amigo
3. North by North­west [ Brawest ride ! ].
4. List of thrillers.
5. Psy­cho — Still gets an echo