Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Sorry, Wrong Number Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 13, 2020

There have of course been innumerable movies which started life as a play, but those plays tended to be performed on stage rather than over the airwaves. Sorry, Wrong Number is a rare example of a hugely successful film which owed its genesis to a radio episode. Playwright Lucille Fletcher is one of the more fascinating women of her generation, one whose personal life included being the wife of Bernard Herrmann, but who achieved significant success herself as a rather provocative writer. Fletcher's original radio play was a tour de force for Agnes Moorehead, in what amounted to a one woman show, and that version was so popular it was brought back over and over (and over, as even this film's trailer, included on this disc as a supplement, mentions) with Moorehead reprising her role each time. A film adaptation on one hand would have seemed to have been a sure bet, given the overwhelming response to the radio version, and yet in another, perhaps much more salient, way, Sorry, Wrong Number would hardly seem to be a property that could be made into a viable movie. That's because the story revolves around a maybe, maybe not seriously ill woman named Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck, Academy Award nominated for this performance) who spends virtually the entire running time of the film bedridden, able to "reach out" to others only via her telephone. And in fact the telephone, both individually and collectively, is almost its own character in this film, as calling back and forth serves as a conduit for a rather labyrinthine plot to be laid out via some surprisingly artful expository passages. Despite so much of the film being centered on Leona "stuck" in her bed, Sorry, Wrong Number is one of the more angsty and propulsive films of its era, another testament to the skill of Fletcher (who wrote the screenplay for the film).

As some of the supplements get into, there are both pluses and minuses to how Fletcher sought to expand what was originally a one woman radio performance that lasted around 22 minutes to the vagaries of a feature film. The biggest change is that there are a lot more characters in this piece, as well as the perhaps unwise decision to depart from the confines of Leona's bedroom for extended periods as all sorts of flashbacks (and even flashbacks within flashbacks) play out in order to contextualize the story. The main conceit of the film is that Leona is party (pun intended, if you know the history of nomenclature surrounding phone lines) to a conversation between two men over her phone (due to "crossed wires"), where they discuss an upcoming murder. The rest of the film involves Leona's increasingly panicked attempts to get someone to believe her, while it slowly but surely becomes evident that she is the proposed victim of the crime.

Now, there's absolutely no question that the original radio version is "tighter" and more intentionally discursive about some of the backstory involved. This adaptation goes off on a number of significant detours, including Leona's history with her husband Henry (Burt Lancaster) and her father James Cotterell (Ed Begley). A convoluted subplot involving drug smuggling is almost completely obscured due to the insistence of Production Code censors, making some of this ostensible contextualizing arguably pretty pointless. Still, despite a perhaps overly wending second act, the film builds to an absolutely shattering climax which is certainly unique and remarkable in the annals of film noir.

Sorry, Wrong Number Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sorry, Wrong Number is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Imprint and Via Vision with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. While Eddie Muller thanks Paramount for preparing this film in HD in his introductory comments, he doesn't really address when or how the film was prepared, and this presentation is rather curiously (and widely) variant. There are parts of this presentation that at least offer something resembling an organic grain field, along with decent detail levels and secure contrast. But there are pretty wide quality disparities throughout, with a number of scenes looking washed out and anemic, and with many scenes looking aggressively filtered. Grain resolution and general compression are really wonky at times, leading to near pixellation (look at the lower left corner of screenshot 17 for just one example, though there are others in other screenshots I've uploaded to this review, quite noticeable if you look at them in full resolution).

Sorry, Wrong Number Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Luckily this films LPCM 2.0 mono track doesn't exhibit the same level of issues the video presentation does. While obviously narrow, the track offers nice fidelity in both dialogue and some well done sound effects. I have to wonder how Franz Waxman felt about scoring a film written by Mrs. Bernard Herrmann, but his score is hyperbolically effective and sounds fine throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Sorry, Wrong Number Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by noir expert and Film Noir Foundation board member Alan K. Rode


• Introduction by Film Historian Eddie Muller (1080p; 2:31)


• Hold the Phone: The Making of Sorry, Wrong Number (1080p; 31:24) features Dorothy Herrmann, daughter of Lucille Fletcher and Bernard Herrmann, among other talking heads. For some reason, parts (but not all) of this look anamorphically stretched.


• Radio Plays

  "Sorry, Wrong Number" - Lux Radio Theater with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster, broadcast January 9, 1950 (1080p; 59:31) plays to a still of Barbara Stanwyck.

  
  

  "Sorry, Wrong Number" - A Radio Play by Lucille Fletcher (1080p; 28:38) is a filmed performance (kind of like a staged reading, with actors holding scripts in front of music stands) done at Shadowland Theatre, Ellenville, USA, on March 24, 2009.

• Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:37)


• Photo Gallery (1080p; 2:50)


• Imprint Trailer (1080p; 00:26)

Sorry, Wrong Number Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Lucille Fletcher had a "real" play, meaning it was stagebound and actually had a decent if not hugely successful run on Broadway, called Night Watch (a film version starring Elizabeth Taylor is available on a DVD from Warner Archive). That was another piece featuring a perhaps psychologically unsound woman suffering at the hands of a nefarious husband. But Fletcher is also very well remembered for another radio play of hers that actually featured a male in duress, The Hitch Hiker, which kind of hilariously was adapted with a female in the focal role in a very famous episode of The Twilight Zone: Season 1, starring Inger Stevens. That episode also contains music by Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the original underscore for the original radio version with Orson Welles, music that was interpolated into the television episode. Sorry, Wrong Number as a film may frankly not work completely, but the overall effect is so devastating my hunch is few will really care about some of its perceived flaws. This Blu-ray has some problematic video, but audio is fine and the supplements quite well done, for those who are considering a purchase.