7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
True story of an innocent man mistaken for a criminal.
Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone, Charles Cooper (I)Film-Noir | 100% |
Drama | 48% |
Mystery | 24% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
BDInfo verified. Spanish=Latin & Castillian; Japanese (192 kbps) is hidden
English SDH, French, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Polish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Alfred Hitchcock famously observed that, while some films are slices of life, his were "slices of
cake". An exception is The Wrong Man, the director's scrupulously accurate re-creation of the
arrest and trial of New York musician Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero in January
1953 for crimes he didn't commit. After reading about Balestrero's case in Life magazine,
Hitchcock commissioned a script by playwright Maxwell Anderson (The Bad Seed), which was
then reworked by Angus McPhail, the screenwriter of
Spellbound. Filming on the streets of
Queens and Brooklyn, and using real locations like actual police stations, courtrooms, the Balestrero home and the
nightclub where Manny performed, Hitchcock tried to make The Wrong
Man look and feel more like a documentary than the thrillers for which he was famous.
The result met with a lukewarm reception, but The Wrong Man has steadily gained in stature,
even as the criminal procedures that ensnared Manny Balestrero have been replaced by alternate
methods (though whether they provide any real protection against mistakes remains a subject of
debate). Hitchcock may have wanted The Wrong Man to seem life-like, but that didn't prevent
him from storyboarding every shot and pre-planning every cut. It could be argued that The Wrong
Man features Hitchcock's style in its purest form, freed from such technical stunts as the
continuous takes of Rope or the limited perspective of
Rear Window. Instead, the director depicts
the collapse of Manny Balestrero's world through subtly disorienting camera angles, unsettling
editing rhythms and the expressive face of Henry Fonda in the lead role.
The Warner Archive Collection ("WAC") is releasing The Wrong Man on Blu-ray with a new
transfer and WAC's usual care in mastering. Attentive fans of WAC's Blu-rays will notice
something new with this disc, which includes chapter stops, multiple spoken and subtitle tracks
and a main menu that uses the standard design found on Blu-ray discs from Warner Home Video.
These user-friendly modifications, taken together with the announcement of six new Archive
titles in just the first two months of 2016, reflect WAC's growing influence in the release of
Warner's classics catalog on Blu-ray.
The Wrong Man was shot by Hitchcock's regular collaborator Robert Burk (Strangers on a
Train, Rear Window, Vertigo and many others). For the Warner Archive Collection's Blu-
ray
release, a new transfer was created by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging by scanning a fine grain
master positive at 2k. Substantial cleanup removed and repaired flaws in the source, but MPI has
taken care to maintain the film's somewhat grainy appearance, which was a deliberate choice by
Hitchcock and Burk in their pursuit of documentary realism. WAC's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features a faithful reproduction of the film's grain
structure with superior resolution of fine
detail. Black levels are accurate, and whites and shades of gray are precisely delineated, allowing
a full appreciation of Hitchcock's deliberate balancing of light and dark areas of the frame, as if
two forces were battling for supremacy. The faces of Henry Fonda and Vera Miles, whose
features Hitchcock repeatedly invites us to study closely, can be observed in tiny detail, as can
the crowd at The Stork Club, the particulars of the courtroom, and numerous other locales, both
real and artificial.
WAC has mastered The Wrong Man at a typically high bitrate of 32.91 Mbps, ensuring a first-rate encode. The days of low bitrates on
Warner
catalog titles are definitely over.
The Wrong Man's original mono soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels, and the quality is impressive. Manny Balestrero's bass-playing registers forcefully with deep extension into the lower ranges, and Hitchcock's typically careful selection of sound effects takes advantage of the same dynamic. Voices are clearly reproduced, including voices off-camera in several crucial scenes. The legendary Bernard Hermann provided one of his most restrained scores, with a jazz influence suggested by Manny's occupation. Hermann may be best remembered for lush orchestrations like those in Vertigo, but The Wrong Man demonstrates that he knew how to be a minimalist when the story required.
The Wrong Man reminds us that an essential function of law enforcement is to sift good
information from bad, genuine evidence from mistake, fact from misinterpretation and false
memory. Despite his well-documented fear of the police, Hitchcock does not make them the
enemy. Indeed, an alert police detective plays an essential role in Manny Balestrero's eventual
release. Still, with mistakes by law enforcement once again becoming a topic of public debate,
The Wrong Man feels strangely relevant today, even though most of us can recite Miranda
warnings from memory after hearing them countless times on TV. WAC's treatment is faithful
and compelling. Highly recommended.
Warner Archive Collection
1953
1947
1948
1945
Warner Archive Collection
1952
Warner Archive Collection
1938
1950
1946
Reissue
1957
1944
Limited Edition to 3000
1947
1950
Limited Edition to 3000
1958
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1950
Reissue | Special Edition
1948
1956
Warner Archive Collection
1944
1951
Hot Spot
1941
The Scar
1948