The Wrong Man is a 1956 American docudrama film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Henry Fonda and Vera Miles.

Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero, a down-on-his-luck musician at New York City's Stork Club, needs $300 for dental work for his wife Rose.

When he visits the office of a life insurance company to borrow money against Rose's policy, he is mistaken by the staff for a man who had held them up twice.

It is one of the most subdued scores Herrmann ever wrote, and one of the few that he composed with some jazz elements, primarily to represent Fonda's appearance as a musician in the nightclub scenes.

[citation needed] A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote that Hitchcock "has fashioned a somber case history that merely points a finger of accusation.

His principals are sincere and they enact a series of events that actually are part of New York's annals of crime but they rarely stir the emotions or make a viewer's spine tingle.

"[11] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times agreed, writing, "As drama, unhappily, it proves again that life can be more interminable than fiction.

"[13] John McCarten of The New Yorker declared, "Mr. Hitchcock makes a good point about the obtuseness of a police group that holds firm to the belief that everyone is guilty until proved innocent, but his story of the badgered musician is never very gripping.

[15] Variety called the film "a gripping piece of realism" that builds to a "powerful climax, the events providing director a field day in his art of characterization and suspense".

[16] Harrison's Reports was also positive, calling it "grim but absorbing melodramatic fare", with Henry Fonda and Vera Miles "highly effective" in their roles.

[21] Richard Brody of The New Yorker wrote that "few films play so tightly on the contrast between unimpeachably concrete details and the vertiginous pretenses of reality.