THE WRONG MAN

Forget "Psycho" and forget "The Birds", the grimmest film Alfred Hitchcock ever made was "The Wrong Man". It's the true story of a musician called Manny Balestrero who was wrongly accused of a series of armed robberies and it's a remarkably fine piece of movie-making, utterly devoid of sentimentality or even conventional thrills. This film has an almost Bressonian rigour to it which is probably why it's never really proved to be that popular; (until he's finally shown to be innocent it's a downward spiral that fundamentally destroy's Manny's life and that of his wife).

Henry Fonda is superb as the totally innocent 'wrong man' and Vera Miles is surprisingly good as the wife unable to cope with events. It's shot, very appropriately and superbly in black and white, by Hitchcock regular Robert Burks and the splendid, and again very appropriate score, is by Bernard Herrmann.