Sorry, Wrong Number

Sorry, but 'Sorry, Wrong Number' loses a lot in its transition to the screen. For one thing, there are too many flabby flashbacks--a form quite popular in the '40s but used extensively in this film, ad nauseum. All of the suspenseful action in the bedroom of the bedridden victim is held at bay while we watch another endless flashback attempting to show us how selfish and unworthy this woman is. If you heard the original radio drama with Agnes Moorehead giving a spine-chilling portrait of Leona, you'll see why the film becomes too diffuse in an attempt to give us "filler material". The fact that Lucille Fletcher adapted her own work for the screen would give the viewer hope that this is going to be just as good as the radio drama--but it's not. Barbara Stanwyck gives an excellent performance, bordering on hysteria toward the finale--but it's an actressy performance and not as controlled as some of her other film noir roles. Burt Lancaster has a colorless role and can't do much with it. Ann Richards is impressive as the woman who tries to warn Leona. By expanding the plot outside the bedroom, Fletcher created a confusing number of sub-plots that simply take away from the tension. Too much padding actually hurts the film. Anatole Litvak's direction is strong--but not strong enough to put the film on the same level with the classic radio drama. The plot is overcomplicated to the nth degree.

Trivia note: The only other film with such heavy use of flashbacks to tell a complicated story is THE LOCKET ('47), but it was done more efficiently than it is here.

Barbara Stanwyck is marvellous! Although she's a rather unlikeable character, she thoroughly captivates your emotions. She drags you completely into her nightmare - you can't look away and like a real nightmare, the sense of not being in control is chillingly real.

Apart from the flashbacks, which epitomise the film noir tropes of the late forties, this film is Barbara Stanwyck alone and scared and trapped in her trappings of wealth. She's confined in the physical and mental luxury jail cell she's made for herself. It's an exceptional performance of a woman in despair driven to the edge, of knowing something awful is about to happen but not being able to do anything about it. It's a perfect example of how a film can stretch out tension and suspense tighter and more intense with each passing minute.

And I also loved it when in one of the flashbacks, Fred shouts to his wife: Hey Sally, Joe wants a bottle of beer and she obligingly dashes out to the shop: oh how 1940s!

An expanded radio play and subsequent TV drama, this film builds terrific tension around a bedridden heiress and her telephone.

Sympathy builds for this unlikeable woman, Leona, played by Barbara Stanwyck. She is a spoiled heiress used to getting her own way, but as we come to see, very much created by her father (played by Ed Begley) who bows to all her wishes.

Her husband, Henry, played by Burt Lancaster, whom she chases and captures from her best friend, initially goes along with being an employee in her father's corporation but eventually starts chafing at the restraints imposed on him.

The movie just about plays in real time with the addition of many flashbacks, one of which secures the knowledge that there is nothing wrong with Leona, it is all psychosomatic based on her mother's fatal illness.

From the moment Leona accidentally overhears a plotted murder for later on that evening, the viewer is taken on a ride that builds suspense and tension to a terrifying conclusion and the movie's title.

Not to be missed. The cinematography is superb, a lot of play in light and shade. Barbara deserved an Oscar but lost. 8 out of 10.

Chrome-plated hokum, Sorry, Wrong Number works despite itself. And works and works. Starting out as a radio drama by Lucille Fletcher in the 1940s, it boasted umpteen performances plus a 1946 production in the nascent medium of television before Anatole Litvak turned it into film noir. During most of its earlier incarnations, Agnes Moorehead created the role of the hysterical, bedridden heiress, the `cough drop queen,' but the film fell into the lap of the First Lady of Film Noir, Barbara Stanwyck. Moorehead was more than a strong enough actress, but Hollywood required a star.

The Irony is that Sorry, Wrong Number is far from her finest hour on screen. Rarely has one been made so aware of Stanwyck `acting' in the most unabashedly actressy way. And the same can be said of Burt Lancaster who, when a role didn't set well with him, communicated his discomfort blatantly. In The Rose Tattoo, against Anna Magnani, he was ingratiating and unconvincing ; here, he's almost as awkward as the henpecked husband in whom the worm has at long last turned.

But maybe Fletcher's slice of devil's food cake calls for mannered histrionics. Ensconced in her bedchamber one sweltering Manhattan evening, her pill bottles and her telephone at her elbow, Stanwyck eavesdrops on a sinister conversation – a murder is being plotted – thanks to a crossed line. This makes her even more restive, and she starts working the phone, tracking down her tardy husband. Litvak `ventilates' these calls, turning them into a series of flashbacks filling in the background to what will prove a very bad evening for Stanwyck. (The sequences on Staten Island, however, could have sprung from the pen of Franklin W. Dixon, the Hardy Boys' puppeteer.)

Unavoidably talky, owing to its source, Sorry, Wrong Number moves inexorably to its preordained end. Basically, it's a gimmick, and one that Hitchcock might have fine-tuned into a nifty infernal machine. Litvak doesn't do badly, though, and the movie's shock value outlasts its staled conventions. Its most chilling moment comes when Stanwyck frantically dials a number that she thinks will give her solace. But her answer is `BOwery 2-1000 – the City Morgue.'

A woman confined to a bed overhears a murder plot on a crossed telephone line and tries to alert the police. The plot structure is quite convoluted, with most of the story told in flashbacks. In fact there are flashbacks within flashbacks, making it somewhat hard to follow. The audience is supposed to feel sympathy for Stanwyck, but the character is too self-centered and whiny for that to happen. Given her character's propensity for histrionics, the actress manages to keep her performance somewhat controlled; Lancaster is fine as her trophy husband. Litvak creates a good film noir atmosphere, although at times his camera roams aimlessly, becoming a distraction.