Since starting this blog I’ve discovered that I love suspense movies. LOVE them. Can’t get enough of them. I’m not sure exactly why I never knew that. Maybe it’s because you don’t see them made that much anymore. I suppose it’s much easier to throw some gore and horror on the screen than to construct a taught film to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Sadly, that means movies like Sorry, Wrong Number are harder to come by.
The story unfolds as Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck, below), bedridden daughter of a millionaire, sits in bed attempting to get ahold of her husband (Burt Lancaster) by telephone. After abusing the operator for awhile, she is mistakenly connected to an open line and hears two men scheming about a murder to be committed that night. But before she can find out who they are or where, she’s disconnected and cannot be re-connected. The remainder of the movie sees Leona trying to find her husband and the soon-to-be murderer, or at least the soon-to-be victim, before it’s too late.
What a great setup. Think of the possibilities with a subject who, confined to one room with one connection to the outside world, learns more and more about a murder that hasn’t yet happened but will very soon, with no one believing her or able to help her. The tension, emphasized marvelously with the use of shadow and circling cameras, makes me smile even now.
And it was a pretty good movie, too.
A couple problems kept Sorry, Wrong Number from being great. First, Stanwyck’s acting is a bit over-the-top for my taste. It was eye-rolling material for the first half of the movie, but as we came closer to the climax and Leona became more desperate, the performance became more and more appropriate.
Secondly, too much of the film was shown in flashback. Regularly moving the focus from that what’s going on in that one bedroom almost neuters the effect of her desperation. Instead of the audience sharing Leona’s panic, we spend time learning about the her and her husband’s past. Their courtship and other details of their lives are fitted between horrific calls and desperate pleas. Rather than focusing like a laser on what’s going on in that panicked moment, the film relaxes into the past, and while we learn important information from the past, there certainly must have been another way to do it that achieved a tighter feel.
I say that because I know it was done tighter. Sorry, Wrong Number started life as a 30-minute radio play with Agnes Moorehead (left, later of Bewitched fame) in the lead role and little other cast. After success on the radio, writer Lucille Fletcher expanded it to three times its original length to fill out a film’s timing (accounting for all the flashbacks). In the radio version, we know very little of Leona’s husband and spend all of our time in the bedroom as she dials and redials (and redials) the operator. Moorehead is fabulous in the lead role and repeated the performance on the radio several times over twenty years.
My suggestion would be to go with the radio program for the original version of the story. podango (a site that old time radio fans should explore). It’s about 30 minutes long. Take a listen by going here.
Without giving away the ending to everyone who didn’t listen to the audio (you know who you are), I will tell you that it blew my mind that they had the guts to do it. I sat there, eyes like saucers, thinking Did they just do what I think they did? Blew. My. Mind.
I love that feeling.
