Crappy film

A Disappointing Continuation

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The Editor of The Chicago Sun Times Brian Kelly (Lee J. Cobb) takes notice to a reward in his paper posted by a Polish Cleaning woman Tillie Wiecek (Kasia Orzazewski).The distraught Mother claims her son Frank is innocent of a crime he didn't commit and is stuck in prison for a 99 year sentence for murder. Editor Kelly puts a reluctant and very skeptical reporter P.J. McNeal (James Stewart) on the case. Initially McNeal feels that there is no evidence to clear the accused and incarcerated lifer Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte) a chance at his innocence. At their very first meeting the reporter and the elderly broken wash woman show her undying sincerity and devotion to her son. Because of her forthrightness you the viewer are convinced that there is some shred of evidence out there that would clear her son from a Murder of a Policeman eleven years earlier in a Chicago Speakeasy. This movie had an engaging quality as you follow reporter McNeal around the dirty, dingy Polish quarter with actual filming done in Chicago neighborhoods and the underbelly of lunch counters and dives as McNeal seeks the truth about that day in question. No fancy musical background to enhance his search. I found some similarities in this Stewart movie as he tries to pull information from a stark,locked mouthed, cold husky owner of that Speakeasy Wanda Skutnik (Bette Garde). You know darn well Skutnik is hiding valuable information yet she keeps her lips sealed. Stewart unravels the mystery involving Wiecek but there's no satisfaction in discrediting the Unresponsive Wanda Skutnik. By comparison a year earlier in the classic IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, Mr. Potter stole that money from Uncle Billy at the bank yet was never brought to justice in that movie. Still this Documentary style thriller holds you from beginning to end with an anticlimactic ending dealing in a photo on the day in question. My favorite Jimmie Stewart movie!

"P. J. McNeal" (James Stewart) is a reporter for a Chicago newspaper who gets handed an assignment to look into a strange add that offers $5000 for information pertaining to a criminal case that was closed 11 years ago. During his investigation P. J. McNeal learns that a young man named "Frank W. Wiecek" (Richard Conte) was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to 99 years in prison and his mother has worked day and night since then to raise the money by scrubbing floors. After gathering some necessary information P. J. McNeal writes a fairly interesting article which receives enough attention to warrant a follow-up piece. Although he doesn't consider Frank Wiecek innocent at first, as P. J. McNeal continues to investigate he finds that his doubts are beginning to grow and this inspires him to dig even deeper. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this turned out to be a pretty good detective-style movie made even more enjoyable by the historical era and location in which it was filmed. It gave a priceless look at Chicago back in the 30's and 40's which history buffs may find quite fascinating. Likewise, the movie itself managed to keep my interest from start to finish as well. In any case, all things considered I rate this movie as above average.

So says one of the observers on random wrongful conviction victim Frank Wiecek in this docudrama (= based on a true AND representative story of the American Way). CALL NORTHSIDE 777 is refreshing for its post-WWII naivete in which inhabitants mistook America for a Democracy (one man, one vote) as opposed to the corporate conglomerate it actually is (one dollar, one vote, codified into law explicitly with the recent CITIZENS vs. UNITED U.S. Supreme Court decision). Why someone as smart as George Bailey (or Chicago TIMES reporter Jim McNeal here) would not know this is beyond me. For 150 years, U.S. law enforcement has had two prime directives: protect rich people's property, and protect itself. Any other goal comes in a distant third at best. When anyone breaches raisons d'etre #1 OR #2, a random poor person can be easily incarcerated and\or fried if the real culprit is not conveniently available or appropriate to convict, as is the case with this story's police patsy, Frank Wiecek (and his inexplicably lost-at-the-end co-defendant, Tomek Zaleska) in this film. Released after 11 years of political imprisonment with just $10, crusading Chicago TIMES reporter Jimmy Stewart tells Frank he's lucky he's been given 91 cents for each of his 11 years at hard labor. So what if Frank lost his youth and his wife, and not even O.J. is looking for Officer Bundy's "real killer" in this case (the late police Captain Norris?). In one of Wikipedia's articles on world justice, it's noted that the percentage of inmates and executed people in the U.S. who were below the poverty line as free civilians is 71%, 20 points higher than any ACTUAL world Democracy (= one man, one vote). Though the Tea Party labels poor people as Satan's spawn, CALL NORTHSIDE 777 proves they're the salt of the earth, as Jesus said, as well as easy pickings when the criminal U.S. justice system needs a scapegoat.

Chicago reporter P.J. McNeal (James Stewart) re-opens a ten year old murder case.Although I am more familiar than the average person on Chicago's gangland in the 1930s, I had not heard the cases of Joseph Majczek and Theodore Marcinkiewicz. Perhaps because they were Polish and the histories tend to focus on Italians. This is a great tale, as all tales of wrongly-convicted men are.James Stewart never fails, and the film is even better that it features the real Leonard Keeler as himself, the inventor of the polygraph machine.