Drawing on a true story, Hitchcock adopts the semidocumentary fashion of film noir to spin off the frightening possibilities when an innocent man is named as the guilty party in a holdup, and the weight of circumstantial evidence builds inexorably against him. Henry Fonda is the New York jazz player Manny, who works nights at the Stork Club but still can’t make ends meet for his wife Rose (Vera Miles) and kids. Bars and shadows are everywhere in Manny’s life, and in Rose’s—in the jail, of course; in the home (of course)—so when the final transference of guilt takes place, it should come as no surprise.