Anatole Litvak’s taut noir drama, ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’
(1948) is an adaptation of Lucille Fletcher’s 22-minute radio play. The script
for the film was written by the original author, embellishing the narrative
with typical elements of film noir – moral corruption, low-key
lighting, bleakness, paranoia, and desperation. Producer Hal Wallis
(Casablanca) was hell-bent on finding a popular star for the main role and got
the queen of film-noir: Barbara Stanwyck. The then growing Hollywood star Burt
Lancaster (his 6th role) played opposite Stanwyck. The two stars' on-set conflicts didn’t eventually affect the movie, although they never worked
together again. For Ukrainian-born American film-maker Mr. Litvak, the year 1948
turned out to be very successful year in his career. While ‘Sorry, Wrong Number’
turned out to be huge box-office success, Litvak’s harrowing drama ‘The SnakePit’ released in the same year to huge critical acclaim and gained seven Oscar
nominations.
In contemporary times, when we think of bleaker facets of
technology, we might picturize our over-dependent online habits. This film,
however, is set in 1940s and the opening crawl forewarns about a communication
device that could instill the sense of doom. This is the post-war era where
telephone communications made it easy to reach out to the loved ones. And, for
Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck), a wealthy yet lonely New York heiress whose
illness confines her to the bedroom, the telephone is her only connection to
the outside world. She repeatedly tries to contact her husband at his office
who is running late. Leona only gets a busy signal. Just when she thinks that
the call is connected, Leona finds herself listening to someone else’s phone
call. The two men talk about killing a woman, somewhere in the city that same
night.
Leona immediately panics and asks the phone operator to
connect her to the police. The lone policeman on work ignores Leona’s report of
a planned murder. Later, she receives a call from her millionaire father (Ed
Begley), who questions whether the husband Mr. Henry Stevenson (Burt Lancaster)
is there to take care of her. Desperate to talk with Henry, Leona calls her
husband’s secretary, who tells her about a mysterious, good-looking woman
meeting with Henry at the office. This leads to more phone calls, and each
unfurls a flashback that gradually crystallizes the mystery behind Henry’s
absence. Leona’s dread escalates further when she realizes that she could be
the target of the men, whom she had heard earlier.
From the 1979 slasher/thriller When a Stranger Calls to the
opening scene in Scream (1996) and the terrorizer in Phone Booth (2002), the
idea of an unknown individual bringing doom through a simple phone call could
bring forth palpable fear in the yesteryear cinema. With the emergence of smart phones, the role of communication devices in constructing cinematic villains has only proliferated. In Mr. Litvak’s movie the pristine, old telephone is pretty much
the symbol of his heroine’s sense of entrapment.
It is easy to comprehend why
this brief radio play that unfolded in the form of monologue was a huge
success. The voice which filtered through the radio instantly forged the
connection with listeners, keeping the narration devoid of unnecessary fillers.
As for a movie narrative, the central character Leona couldn’t be treated as
the only point-of-connection to viewers. Hence, director Litvak punctuates the
plot with more conflicts and betrayals, and pushes it to feature-length with
extensive flashbacks. Some of the plot complications bring deep suspense to the
proceedings, while some twists are purely an excess.
The brilliant aspect of Litvak’s direction is his study of
space. The camera itself often behaves like a free entity breaking away from
characters, taking in the details of their domestic space. Camera movement
inside Leona’s mansion often emphasizes her insecure feelings and restlessness,
whereas the other fluid camera movements accounting the space, encompassing the
supporting characters, delivers the sense of who they are. Cinematographer Sol
Polito (The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Petrified Forest) and Mr. Litvak do a
thorough job in manifesting fatalistic alarm and tension through the use of
autonomous camera. The wonderful crane shot towards the end which descends down
from Leona’s bedroom (her aural presence is maintained) actively infuses sense
of unease, something which is comparable to the snazzy visual flourishes of
Alfred Hitchcock.
Despite the overly complicated plot conventions and
improbable coincidences, Sorry, Wrong Number (88 minutes) is a slick film noir
drama benefited by director Anatole Litvak’s supreme style and Barbara Stanwyck’s grand
performance.
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