The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

• 
  
  December 31, 2011

  cosmo313

  This is basically the film that really saw Hitchcock's film career take off and become something grand. It has his real breakout hit, and even had the distinction of being remade (by Hitchh imself), in a version that a number of people say is far superior. I haven't seen that one... read more yet, but I plan to.
  
  The plot concerns a man who, after learning of some dire news concerning an upcoming assassination, finds his daughter kidnapped by some people who witnessed him learning of their diabolical plot. The film then shifts to him trying ot rescue his daughter on his own as well as to stop the planned killing from taking pace.
  
  This is fast paced and familiar Hitch, but it all a lot of fun, and pretty well done. For what it's worth, it also features the English language debut of Peter Lorre, and he does quite a decent job here.
  
  All in all, this is a pretty decent way to spend 75 minutes, and there's a lot of good set pieces and moments that amp up the suspense and entertainment value. Give it a go.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  October 12, 2011

  blacksheepboy

  Hitchcock was still learning his craft and improving his directing skills when he made this unimpressive, thematically flawed film that even he disliked. The humor eliminates most of the tension, while the weak script has villains whose motivations are never clear enough. No wond... read moreer why he decided to refilm this.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  July 2, 2011

  mumby1988

  Where some directors reach a creative peak from which further innovation becomes impossible, Alfred Hitchcock was constantly developing as a filmmaker, pushing the limits of what he could achieve on screen. But while this has given us some of the most superbly crafted films ever ... read moremade, it has the downside of making his early work rather uneven. The Man Who Knew Too Much, like Murder! before it, finds the master still finding himself, and for all its qualities it cannot be considered a classic.
  
  There is some natural interest in The Man Who Knew Too Much as the only film which Hitchcock ever remade. Our first thought would be that 'Hitch' was somehow dissatisfied with the results the first time around; he was, after all, working with very little money at the height of the studio system where producers held sway. But such levels of dissatisfaction with his other movies in this period never prompted him to remake any of them. For years he would express regret for the bomb going off in Sabotage, but he never contemplated building a new one to have another go.
  
  Instead, the reason for the remake lies in Hitchcock's career-long emphasis on technique over content. The remake starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day differs greatly from the original, not because Hitch didn't like the original, but because he saw great potential in telling the same story with more money in a slightly different way. Just as the Indiana Jones series re-imagined the classic serials of the 1930s as they would have been had they actually had budgets, so the remake is Hitchcock paying tribute to the bits of the original that work and updating those that don't.
  
  In terms of its story, The Man Who Knew Too Much is a decent thriller about ordinary people being caught up in espionage. It is perhaps the first of Hitchcock's films to have the 'ordinary people' trope - a recurring theme of seemly unremarkable characters getting involved in matters beyond their prior knowledge or control. The opening section at the ski resort is shot in such a pleasant and charming manner that it doesn't feel like a contrived way of putting our protagonists in danger.
  
  There are a couple of memorable scenes in the 'detective' section of the film, with the characters snooping around for clues as to when the assassins are planning to strike or where they have hidden the girl. The first comes in the backstreet dentist's, where Leslie Banks confronts a dentist who works for the mob, anaesthetises him and then switches clothes so he can listen in on Peter Lorre's conversations. The other comes shortly afterwards in the church, where Banks and his companion pose as sun worshippers in a bid to find out what is going on.
  
  Both of these examples are like warm-ups for The 39 Steps, and the two films also share a common theme of loyalty to one's country being in opposition with personal loyalties and the need to save one's own skin. When Banks' daughter is kidnapped, he is informed that if he says anything to the authorities he will never see her again. He and his wife are so distraught at the prospect of her being killed that they refuse to say anything to the man from the Foreign Office. When he retorts that "not caring about unknown men" effectively led to WWI, they simply ask him to leave.
  
  From a technical perspective, The Man Who Knew Too Much is a pretty solid effort. It doesn't have the stagey quality that Murder! did for much of its running time, and the production values are a lot higher. The wide shots are especially accomplished, particularly the clay-pigeon shooting at the beginning and the tense sequence in the Royal Albert Hall when the assassination is due to take place. The attempted assassination at the opera during The Godfather Part III closely resembles this scene, although in that case the assassin fails to make an attempt, rather than making an attempt that fails.
  
  In other areas, however, the film is not so technically sound. Whether due to poor technology at the time or the age of the print, the sound quality is quite bad, and this becomes particularly noticeable in the scenes at the Royal Albert Hall. Some of Hitch's editing choices are quite unusual, with characters' conversations being cut off before they seemed to have been properly resolved. And the cinematography is nothing remarkable: Curt Courrant would later shoot Jean Renoir's La Bete Humaine, but here he seems to be phoning it in with fairly standard contrasts and compositions.
  
  The film fares much better in its performances. At the time of filming Peter Lorre could barely speak English: he learned all his lines phonetically, picking up bits and pieces from the crew between takes. Despite the language barrier his characterisation is great, creating a villain who has a childlike, almost babyish quality while also being ruthless, intolerant and deaf to any form of mercy. Drawing on his earlier performance in Fritz Lang's M, he creates a villainous archetype which can be seen in everything from Richard Attenborough's Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock to Ron Lacey's sadistic Gestapo in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
  
  The performances around Lorre are also pretty solid. Nova Pilbeam was only 15 when filming began but she does very well with so little screen time. Her career crossed paths with Hitchcock twice more, as she was considered first for Margaret Lockwood's role in The Lady Vanishes and later for Joan Fontaine's part in Rebecca. Leslie Banks and Edna Best make a convincing couple, balancing fear and trepidation with some level of resourcefulness, whether it's spying or using a gun. And George Curzon makes the best he can of the sidekick Gibson, with his role being the bumbling Watson to Banks' Sherlock Holmes.
  
  The big problem of The Man Who Knew Too Much lies, ironically enough, in its suspense. Because it reveals its hand so early on, there is far less in the way of intrigue or tension than there might have been or could have been from such a story. The film is one of Hitchcock's shortest features at only 75 minutes long, and if it were being made today its plot would barely stretch to an hour-long episode of Poirot.
  
  The source of this problem is in the lack of another Hitchcockian trope, the McGuffin. Once it is clear that Abbott is plotting an assassination, there is nothing for the action to hide behind: it becomes more or less a case of watching all the pieces fit together and letting the set-pieces do the rest. There's still the pleasure of seeing the story being resolved without any plot holes or ridiculous twists, but it doesn't have the climactic thrill we have come to expect from Hitchcock.
  
  In The 39 Steps, the final confrontation between Richard Hannay and the spies was built up successfully through increasingly elaborate set-pieces, so that by the time we reached the final scene it carried some form of emotional significance rather than just bringing the story to a close. But on this occasion, the big climax - a shootout between assassins and police - feels tacked-on and somewhat shapeless. Rather than building bit by bit, it goes on for a certain amount of time until Hitch sees fit for some of the bullets to hit their targets, and Lorre dies in a way which seems underwhelming for such a memorable character.
  
  The Man Who Knew Too Much is a solid, jobbing effort from Hitchcock on a par with his earlier work in Murder!. It's nothing to write home about in terms of its story or execution, and like much of Hitch's earlier films it has not stood the test of time all that well. But there is just about enough in the quality of the performances and aspects of its technical execution to pass muster for a decent, if forgettable, evening's entertainment.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  September 8, 2010

  ajv2688

  Although the remake is more stylized and has more popular stars, the original movie is really pretty good.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  April 29, 2010

  ythelastman89

  I personally feel that this is the best of Hitchcockâ??s early works. It has an incredibly fun premise with a lot of great characters and twists. Peter Lorre is amazing and incredibly kooky with his blonde streaked hair and squeaky voice. What this film lacks in funding and produ... read morection value it makes up for in originality and beautifully framed shots. Children getting kidnapped on a vacation had to have been scary at the time of its release.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  January 21, 2010

  jjnxn

  As with all Hitchcock there are good things here but the James Stewart/Doris Day remake is superior.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  July 26, 2009

  sanjurosamurai

  a very short but very good early film from hitchcock. lorre is excellent as always and the film succeeds at every turn after a strange 15 minute opening sequence. solid thriller.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  December 14, 2008

  matertenebraum

  In the novel, THE SECRET AGENT, Joseph Conrad had dissected the world of anarchists, double agents and spies, and police in the East End of London of 1894, the year that an attempt to destroy the Greenwich Observatory occurred. Alfred Hitchcock used Conrad's novel for his film SA... read moreBOTAGE in 1936. But two years earlier he did the film THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. It was the first of two films in which Peter Lorre was directed by him. It was also the only one of his movies that he remade complete with title. But he decided to use the film to film a scene from British criminal history - the January 1911 "Siege of Sidney Street".
  
  There had been an incident in December 1910 when several Russian aliens were involved in a burglary in Houndsditch. The proceeds of their robberies (aside from supporting themselves) helped fund anti-Tsarist activities in Russia. They killed three constables in making their escape from the shop. They were eventually tracked down to a house on Sidney Street, and fired at the police who tried to get them to surrender. The Home Secretary of the day (a politician named Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill) sent out troops, sharp shooters, and artillery. The cannon set the house on fire, and the men found inside were found to be dead. The best account of the event is Donald Rumbelow's THE SIEGE OF SIDNEY STREET called THE HOUNDSDITCH MURDERS in Great Britain.
  
  Here, instead of radicals (called anarchists in 1911) we have foreign conspirators planning an assassination in London of a foreign head of state. Peter Lorre is the leader. Leslie Banks and his family are on vacation to Switzerland. Banks witnesses the murder of a Frenchman (Pierre Fresney, a great French star of the period - this English film is a rarity for him). Fresney reveals the assassination plot to Banks, and Lorre and his associates kidnap his daughter (Nora Pilbeam) to keep his mouth shut. But the police are aware that he heard something from Fresney, and try to pressure him to talk.
  
  So we watch Banks try to track down his daughter (and get captured himself) while his wife goes to the Albert Hall to see what she can do.
  
  The finale of the film is based on the Siege - with some exceptions (one of the bobbies in the Houndsditch tragedy is shot and killed in the start of the movie's version of the incident). But Hitchcock maintains the suspense to the end, when the last villain is taken care of.
  
  It's an interesting film - not a great one. And it is somewhat different from the 1956 remake

  Share This Review
• 
  
  January 20, 2008

  webalina

  I read good reviews about this original version of Hitchcock's story of a man who must rescue his child from kidnappers after he learns of their assasination plot, but it left me cold. Peter Lorre was pretty good as the villain, but the rest of the performances were extremely pos... read moretured and stiff. I've never made it through the remake with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day, and this wasn't much better. If I want Hitchcock, I'll stick with Rebecca, 39 Steps or Psycho.

  Share This Review
• 
  
  August 24, 2006

  michaelcorleone

  An extremely suspenseful film whose plot and pacing are admirable. Peter Lorre is fantastic.

  Share This Review

• Leslie Banks as Bob Lawrence
• Edna Best as Jill Lawrence
• Hugh Wakefield as Clive
• Nova Pilbeam as Betty Lawrence
• Cicely Oates as Nurse Agnes
• Peter Lorre as Abbott
• Frank Vosper as Ramon Levine
• Pierre Fresnay as Louis Bernard
• George Curzon as Gibson

Click a thumb to vote on that suggestion, or add your own suggestions.

• 
  Dao (The Blade) (100%)
• 
  The Man Who Knew Too Much (92%)
• 
  The Invisible Man Returns (50%)
• 
  Sabotage (100%)

• Which Hitchcock film was the first to be remade?  Answer »
• In what Alfred Hitchcock movie can we hear the song Que Sera Sera by Doris Day?  Answer »
• In which movie do Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart travel haflway around the world to recover their kidnapped children?  Answer »
• Director Alfred Hitchcock made THREE versions of the film "The Man Who Knew Too Much".  Answer »

No quizzes for The Man Who Knew Too Much. Want to create one?

No video clips yet. Want to upload one?

• PrincessOf...
• Epicouros
• papachewie
• w3stfa11
• LoneWoIf
• josephchaina
• nayita23
• vasperlynd

No recent headlines. Got one?

• 

  John's Hitchcock Collection

  by unst50
  43 Movies
• 

  Alfred Hitchcock

  by papachewie
  34 Movies
• 

  It´s MUSIC

  by emiliotejera
  20 Movies
• 

  under 1:30

  by npgrasso
  25 Movies
• 

  All the Movies I've Seen

  by iluvthebassoon
  737 Movies

No skins yet. Interested in creating one?