Henry Fonda takes the role of Manny Balestrero, a struggling nightclub musician, who was falsely arrested in 1953 for robbing an insurance office. Sticking close to the actual events of the case, Hitchcock shoots the film in a black and white documentary style, choosing actual locations, including the Stork Club where Manny worked and scenes shot in a prison in Queens employing actual prisoners. “Few films play so tightly on the contrast between unimpeachably concrete details and the vertiginous pretenses of reality. Hitchcock’s ultimate point evokes cosmic terror: innocence is merely a trick of paperwork, whereas guilt is the human condition” –Richard Brody, The New Yorker.