Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Beautiful, moving film.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

SORRY, WRONG NUMBER is a famous film noir with a great little premise: an invalid wife picks up the phone only to overhear a murder being planned. The story goes from there, but that premise is so memorable that the telephone has become well-used as an object of terror in cinema ever since. Barbara Stanwyck delivers a performance entirely from her bed and is typically intense, while most of the tale plays out in flashback. It's complex, complicated stuff, involving family control, drug smuggling, and business malpractice, and there are well-judged performances from Burt Lancaster as Stanwyck's absent husband and a youthful William Conrad as a slimy killer. Watch out for that shocker of an ending.

A powerful, earth shattering performance by the legendary Barbara Stanwyck turns a totally convoluted thriller into one of the most magnificent film noir ever made. Simply riveting thanks to the frantic desperation of her character Leona Stevenson who is left alone in her Sutton Place home with her husband Burt Lancaster missing. Unable to easily get around, the demanding Leona frantically tries to find her husband and alert the police to the shocking call she overheard involving the pending murder of a woman whose identity she is unable to find out. Through clues and flashbacks to her past, she picks up details that ultimately reveal who the victim is, finding out why, when and where, leading to a shocking conclusion. Through these flashbacks, we learn how Stanwyck and Lancaster met, what lead to her illness, and certain aspects of her personality that aren't very pretty. What leads to the desperate situation resulting in the pending murder is as intriguing as the sinister actions of her Phyllis Diedrickon character from "Double Indemnity". Stanwyck is absolutely commanding, ironically playing a very demanding woman who won't rest until she gets what she wants, no matter who gets run over in the process.As her powerful but clinging father, Ed Begley is excellent, while Ann Richards, as Lancaster's old flame, makes the most out of a role rumored to have been greatly chopped. Wendell Corey, an ineffective actor in romantic hero parts, has a small role, and later was the leading man in two Stanwyck films. Leif Erickson and William Conrad have other showy smaller roles. As for Burt Lancaster, it's another example of Stanwyck mentoring a newcomer, and he turns a basically unsympathetic character into somebody who you might feel sorry for even through he's in a drastic situation with no way out. I just wish that these two, both at the top of my favorite actors list, had the opportunity to work together again.The film sags a bit in convoluted flashbacks as Richards explains what she knows, but that's forgotten when the action returns to Stanwyck. Yet there is something a lot more intriguing behind the messy situation. That fantastic upper east side apartment becomes like a character as what becomes Leona's sanctuary quickly becomes her prison. As the horror on her face increases, she starts to show the vulnerability that had disappeared from her personality years earlier. The horrifying conclusion brings me to another: never remake this in any manner, especially if the leading character is one of those twit wits obsessed with their cell phone.

A great example of film noir, 'Sorry, Wrong Caller' has a taut script, with a bed-ridden woman getting connected into a phone call between thugs planning a murder that evening, and proceeding to tell her story in flashbacks as the fateful hour looms. Barbara Stanwyck plays her character very well, ranging from dominating rich girl to frightened invalid, and a young Burt Lancaster is her handsome husband who wants to be more than a kept man. Director Anatole Litvak includes some nice shots, including a creepy pan back from Stanwyck's bedroom, out her window, and down to the shadow of an approaching man, and he's also faithful to the original radio play, which I first read in McSweeney's 'Hitchcock and Bradbury Fistfight in Heaven'. Definitely worth checking out.

This somewhat "better-than-average", 1948, Hollywood Thriller was originally a 30-minute radio play written in 1943 by Lucille Fletcher.So, with that in mind, you can just imagine how much extra padding this film's story required in order to turn it into a 90-minute vehicle for the likes of Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.Featuring some excellent b&w camera-work, "Sorry, Wrong Number" certainly contains enough suspense and tension-filled moments to allow the viewer to forgive its decidedly convoluted storyline that (once again) gets itself bogged down with way too much "flashback" nonsense.Well, if nothing else - Being a vintage, Hollywood production, "Sorry, Wrong Number" does, at least, rise above your typical "screwball" comedy which seemed to prevail during that particular era in movie-making history.