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Sorry, Wrong Number Movie Review

Sorry, Wrong Number is a 1948 noir film directed by Anatole Litvak and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster. It’s a flawed, but intriguingly dark feature.

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“I want you to get yourself out of the bed,

and get over to the window and scream as loud as you can“

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A woman who is bedridden accidentally overhears a phone conversation wherein two men conspire to commit murder. She tries to prevent the crime by piecing together the information she could gather. This movie features a very unique premise for the time, focusing on the telephone as a device used for suspense purposes, effectively making this an early example of a technological thriller. It’s very much of its time, but in the best way possible.

My main issue with this noir feature is its slow pace and an overly talkative approach to storytelling that was obviously a much better fit for the stage than the screen. This simple premise was so simplistic that the filmmakers ended up adding numerous additional subplots and characters to the main narrative, which led to a cluttered screenplay that didn’t fully work.

With that being said, the ending of this story is so incredibly brave in its inherent darkness that it elevated the entire movie to much greater heights. Basically, what we have here is a tragic ending that was so unexpected and so shocking that it really had a strong effect on me. It’s the perfect conclusion to this movie, one that made this entire film much more memorable than it otherwise would have been.

Sorry, Wrong Number paired Stanwyck with Lancaster and the results are only solid. He is very well used and quite memorable, but Stanwyck was miscast unfortunately. She was always such a strong screen presence that this scared and hysterical woman was not a good fit for her. She did a very good job in the role that eventually lent her an Oscar nomination, but the role was still quite clearly beneath her.

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The movie is very well directed by Anatole Litvak, strongly edited and particularly well shot and scored. It’s a technically polished feature that benefited from terrific dialogue and clever writing, but it was in desperate need of a brisker pace and a less cluttered narrative. It would have been a classic had it been more engaging and less complicated.