Boy, Hitch really liked stories of ordinary men in over their heads, which he never covered more realistically than in The Wrong Man. He even traded his traditional cameo for a brief introduction emphasizing his script was wholly Based on a True Story. Unfortunately that also makes it one of his least engrossing films: linear with few surprises, and, as in many Hitchcock films, dwelling on the director’s phobias and kid fears, in this case, of cops and of wrongful imprisonment. The style and cinematography, unlike most anything else Hitchcock directed, glows like a European arthouse film mixed with film noir, all downturned hats and shadows, and a vivid time capsule of a gritty New York City in 1956. Fifty years later and the bridges and the subway stations look the same.
And what better everyman to play Mr. Guilty Until Proven Innocent than Henry Fonda, a doe-eyed upstanding American with a face like a laborer in a Great Depression breadline.
Vera Miles as his wife portrays a worrisome decent into madness with a beauty you can see would have worked for Vertigo. Hitch wanted her for the role of Madeleine in that film but when she got pregnant, it went to Kim Novak.