Did anyone else find it suspicious that the police asked Balestero twice to write the threatening note? I kept thinking that their plan was to introduce one of the notes as the one from the real thief and then the other, which of course would be a perfect match, as the one from their suspect.
shareIn reality, the cops had him write the note quite a few times, perhaps 5-6. In ONLY ONE did Manny spell the word drawer incorrectly, as the real thief did. Of course, that is the version that the cops seized on.
Ocala Mike
Manny's "mistake" was a flawed piece of evidence, too. Not only did the cop have a heavy accent that made it almost sound like he was saying "draw" anyway, he was reading FROM the note which actually read 'draw' instead of 'drawer,' which certainly could have affected his pronounciation in a very subtle, subconscious way.
shareExcellent point 👍
shareYes and then, when the two witnesses died, I was sure that it was a conspiracy. Surely that's what Hitch wanted us to believe?
shareActually, I think Hitchcock wanted to create the thought in us that sometimes a series of bad breaks in the form of chance events that life throws at us can even be worse than a concocted conspiracy. Most people don't think they will ever be victimized by a conspiracy against them, but we've probably all been caught up in some "weird" chance events that "ruined our day," though maybe not to the extent as Manny.
Ocala Mike
I have wonder about this.
One of my working theories was that "the third man" (Ohoho, excuse the reference to another film noir ) looked suspiciously like Manny, killed the other two card players that could identify him, robbed the stores/banks/etc., and then tried to frame Manny. All for money.
Now obviously this isn't what was portrayed in the movie, but it was the kind of Hitchcockian twist I was expecting. I like the idea someone else mentioned that Hitch is playing on us and our ideas of what a "Hitchcock film" entails with The Wrong Man.
Isn't it amazing that of the few billion people on the face of the earth at the time, or even of the few million males in the NYC area, exactly one would misspell "drawer"? Someone tell me that police training has come somewhere since those days.
I don't understand why Manny wants to blame the crook for what happened to his wife. Surely the blame lies with the gentlemen (dubiously known as "detectives") who were with him and with the ladies who walked past him a moment before.
The entire chain of events that lead to what happened with Manny's wife started with the crook choosing to rob places (An act that is already bad to begin with), so...yeah.
Granted, we don't know exactly why the crook decided to steal either. IIRC he mentions something about his wife and family during the botched robbery.
Sure, the crook was the remote cause of Manny's wife's suffering but the women in the insurance office and the "detectives" were the proximate cause. You can't stop crooks robbing stores but you can exercise some reasonable diligence and common sense when it comes to identifying a criminal or investigating a crime. Even if you excuse those women for their tragic mistake, there's no excuse for the imbecility and/or laziness of the police.
shareOh certainly there's no excuse, the police's actions here are atrocious.
Of the three main parties that wronged Manny though (The crook, the women, and the police), I feel the crook is really the only one that Manny hadn't a chance to even react against.
Manny already gives the women that hard stare at the end of the film, and I think if he directly called the police stupid or whatever, he would just be verbalizing what the rest of the film already does a great job of spelling out.
I always thought there was something suspicious about the way the detective handled the notes--it was possible he showed the actual crook's note to Manny instead of the one Manny wrote. By the way, I thought Harold J. Stone was excellent as the detective--the tone, the attitude, the New York accent...great job.
It was also intersting that he kept saying an innocent man has nothing to worry about...
Hitchcock really had me going for a bit in that scene. I think Hitchcock intentionally made sure that the two pieces of paper given to Manny were of exactly the same dimensions and color as the original note.
I was worried that the policeman (who was dictating to Manny) might accidentally mistakes and starts to think one of the Manny's handwritten notes as the original. Not to mention, these three notes then are passed to another policeman and than back to first one. Too many hands and similar paper with same content on all of them!! I thought there is some blunder bound to happen in here.
Now when this is shown in court, the hand-writing experts would easily identify the other note written by Manny to be a 100% match. Because there are two notes by Manny in there!!
But during this time when I was indulging myself in these thoughts, the scene had actually gone to that misspelling of the world "drawer" as "draw".
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Spelling the word "drawer" as "draw" is in fact a common mistake in New York, in which final r's are often not pronounced. (This would have been somewhat more common then than now, but it's still far from rare.)
shareI wouldn't think that would happen in a million years under the circumstances.
share[deleted]
I did not and do not think that the police would go that far. I do think that they had him write it twice, and would have had him write it three or more times until he made the mistake they wanted him to make.
Plain block printing in all caps looks pretty much the same. They wanted something to hang the note on. That's how detectives work.
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