Hitchcock’s Truth, or: Why The Wrong Man is Not a Suspense Film

Abstract

During a fifty-hour interview in the mid-1960s about Hitchcock’s work, François Truffaut asked Alfred Hitchcock: “Do you believe that The Wrong Man is a successful film?” “Well, yes,” answered the master, “My determination to follow the true events as exactly as possible is the reason for the considerable weaknesses in the film’s construction… It meant too much to me to stick to the truth. I was too afraid to allow myself the necessary dramaturgical freedom.”³ What is lacking from this film, which was shot in 1956 prior to Vertigo and North by Northwest, is the element that defines Hitchcock’s movies: suspense. Instead of surprising the audience with unforeseeable twists and turns, Hitchcock presents the audience with a “true story” as he explains in a short prologue. This prologue is markedly different from his otherwise ironic short cameo appearances. Standing in a single spotlight behind a film studio set, the director addresses his audience much as a radio reporter would: “This is Alfred Hitchcock speaking. In the past, I have given you many kinds of suspense pictures. But this time I would like you to see a different one. The difference lies in the fact that it is a true story, every word of it. And yet, it contains elements that are stranger than all the fiction that has gone into many of the thrillers that I’ve made before.”⁴

We did away with the real world: which world remained? The false world, perhaps? … On the contrary! Along with the real world, we also did away with the false world!²

—Friedrich Nietzsche

The translation of all German quotes and titles have been rendered by the translator.