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Anatole Litvak finally does something with his camera besides plop it down and film his actors as though they were performing on a stage. He pushes it into star Barbara Stanwyck’s face so we can count every drop of sweat that forms across her brow and upper lip while she lies in bed and frantically uses the phone. It’s far more engaging than it sounds, as Stanwyck was one of the greatest film artists of all-time.
However, Sorry, Wrong Number is betrayed by its radio origins by struggling to not only sustain the tension but pad out the running time. We get a flashback to how Stanwyck met husband Burt Lancaster and stole him from Ann Richards, and the sexual dynamo of Stanwyck gets a chance to shine. Otherwise, the normally controlled, naturalistic actress gives one of her biggest, brashest, near Brechtian performances. It’s as though she watched Susan Hayward and Joan Crawford poach the women’s pictures parts and thought she could do them one better.
Given that she’s Barbara Stanwyck, she can. We are almost repelled by not only the largeness of her performance but her character’s hysteria and near emotional abuse. The eventual reveal of her character as potentially faking her illness or being a victim of psychosomatic disorders almost rehabilitates her.
Normally, these stories reorient that world that the bad guys get punished and order is restored. Given that film noir, of which this is either is or adjacent enough towards to qualify, operates in a world of perpetual smoke and moral grays, we typically end up with the bad guys winning and the worst guys losing. Even under the heavy hand of the Hays Code, film noir bucked the convention. Never mind Stanwyck’s carnal charge and hard living bucking the code. Sorry, Wrong Number gets a downbeat so bleak that I ended nearly loving the film in a profound way. Not even the code could tame Stanwyck.
