The Wrong Man

Kafka's trial, transposed into the reality of everyday life. Hitchcock's quietest film: sparse, unadorned, bitter. The musician Manny Balestrero gets caught up in the anonymous machinery of justice: witnesses want to recognise him as the man who committed a robbery. Tom Tykwer: ‘Hitchcock unfolds the image of a web that is not looking for a guilty party, but wants one, and which inexorably tightens around Manny. In growing desperation, he asks the police officers interrogating him: ‘What can I do to prove my innocence? Whereupon they repeat those terrible sentences with penetrating insistence: ‘All you have to do is tell us the truth. If you have nothing to hide, there's nothing to fear. Hitchcock gives the lie to this assertion. He meticulously illuminates every step with which the police lure their victims into a trap.’

Photo: Österreichisches Filmmuseum