Warner Bros.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(Blu-ray, Warner Archive Collection)
Henry Fonda is a musician and family man who is falsely accused of robbing local establishments at gunpoint. A couple of detectives pick him up in front of his house and subject him to questioning without a lawyer. Fonda naively obeys them, giving them plenty of circumstantial evidence. He is sent to the local prison and spends a harrowing night in jail. His wife gets bail money and they hire a friendly lawyer to represent him in the trial. They track down witnesses for an alibi, but are unable to come up with anything substantial. The trial date arrives and it looks bad for him, until a juror speaks out of turn and a mistrial is declared, starting the process all over again. It's all too much for Fonda's wife, who has a mental breakdown and is sent to an institution to recover. Eventually, the real robber is caught and Fonda is cleared, though it takes a bit longer for his wife. Hitchcock based this on a real story and shot it in and around the actual locations of New York City. Fonda is perfect as the innocent everyman and the first half of the film is terrific. Vera Miles mental breakdown, however, weighs down the second half, as does the anticlimactic trial.
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