Stanwyck's metamorphosis from indolence to hysteria is brilliantly executed.
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:21
Fresh:18
Rotten:3
Average Rating:6.8/10
Runtime: 89 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Synopsis: In director Anatole Litvak's superb thriller SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, Barbara Stanwyck stars as the alluring, wealthy, and irritating Leona Stevenson, a hypochondriac whose psychosomatic illness has... In director Anatole Litvak's superb thriller SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, Barbara Stanwyck stars as the alluring, wealthy, and irritating Leona Stevenson, a hypochondriac whose psychosomatic illness has her bedridden. Leona's only lifeline is the telephone, which she uses to excess. One evening, Leona impatiently tries to locate her henpecked husband Henry (Burt Lancaster), who is late in coming home. However, when phone lines cross, she overhears two thugs plotting a murder. Desperate to thwart the crime, Leona begins a series of calls--to the operator, to the police, and others--and eventually deduces the shocking identity of the victim. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Leona, Henry is having problems of his own--he's become involved in a swindle and is being blackmailed. Featuring stunning use of sound and lighting, SORRY, WRONG NUMBER follows Leona, trapped in her lush apartment, as she tries to prevent an innocent from being murdered. [More]
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann Richards, Wendell Corey, Harold Vermilyea, Ed Begley, Leif Erickson, William Conrad, John Bromfield, Jimmy Hunt, Dorothy Neumann
Director: Anatole Litvak
Director: Anatole Litvak
Screenwriter: Lucille Fletcher
Producer: Anatole Litvak, Hal B. Wallis
Composer: Franz Waxman
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Reviews for Sorry, Wrong Number
Fletcher adapted her celebrated 22-minute, single-character radio play into an almost equally tense screenplay, still retaining many of the eerie sound effects.
A precursor to the far better Rear Window, but noir has seen better days.
The European émigré director, Anton Litvak, shoots Stanwyck's bedroom as if it were a luxury prison.
Number derives sleek hysteria from its audaciously constraining narrative strategy.
Anatole Litvak's taut, gripping, highly stylized noir, based a 22 minute radio play with Agnes Moorehead, is one of the genre's very best, with a bed-ridden Stanwyck in a tour de force performance--a case study for lover of film noir.
It is a carefully plotted film that leads to an extraordinary ironic climax.
A good script, but it should have been filmed with the woman who made it famous on the stage, Agnes Moorehead.
Perhaps if you have a special interest in foul folks and morbidities, you will thrill to this Hal Wallis picture. Frankly, we squirmed -- and not from dread.
To make a movie of Lucille Fletcher's classic radio play was really to betray its best idea: that sound, not sight, is the truly paranoid sense.
Latest News for Sorry, Wrong Number
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