 He was honest. Everyone else made the mistake. 
An array of posters were made for Alfred Hitchcock's crime drama The Third Man, which was titled in Italy simply Il ladro—“the thief”—but we've chosen this unusual mugshot based promo because it encapsulates the film nicely. The tired look on star Henry Fonda's face says it all. He's mega-screwed. There are probably other movies that took the mugshot route with their poster art, but we can't remember seeing any examples. For Il ladro, the mugshot poster was part of a series of photo promos taken from various frames in the film, but today we'll just share the one above. Also, below you'll see two more Italian posters painted by Luigi Martinati. It's rare that we prefer photo art to paintings, but this case, because of the subject matter of the film, is one of those exceptions.
Said subject matter is the true tale of Emmanuel Balestrero, an everyman who is falsely identified as an armed robber. This leads to his arrest, ordeal in jail, trial, and retrial. The movie hails from a more naive time, before Americans realized that when the police come asking questions the only answer you give is: “Am I under arrest?” And if the answer is yes, the next thing you say is: “Lawyer,” and that's all you ever say. It's crucial never to talk, because in the U.S. cops are allowed to lie to you, claim there are witnesses that don't exist, or that there's evidence they don't really have. That isn't legal in England, Australia, New Zealand, and many other countries. But Fonda doesn't know any of that, and ultimately that's largely why he ends up behind bars.
After he makes bail he and co-star Vera Miles pound the pavement investigating the false accusation. We doubt that happened in real life, but that's the movies for you. Their amateur sleuth bit works fine narratively. There's a psychological digression that's less compelling, but was included because it was part of the true story. On the whole, though, we like the movie. And we like Hitchcock's style here during his middle phase (he began directing in 1922 and finished in 1976), before high concept thrillers like Vertigo and Rear Window—though those are also good. Here he keeps it mostly basic, and the result is a harrowing drama, which is hard to bear as Fonda is slowly railroaded, but is extremely well put together and compellingly acted. The Wrong Man premiered in the U.S. in 1956 and reached Italy today in 1957.
           
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1945—Hitler Marries Braun
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia's Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden. 1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon. 1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing. 1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe. 1945—Mussolini Is Arrested
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
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