A remake of Alfred Hitchcock's 1934 film of the same name, The Man Who Knew Too Much tells the story of a family which, while vacationing in Morocco, gets unexpectedly entangled in an assassination plot and is pursued by the conspirators who are hellbent on preventing them from causing any sort of interference with their plans.

Having watched a number of Hitchcock's films in the past few days, I was expecting another mood-escalating thriller from the genius filmmaker who never fails to amaze but this time the experience wasn't as satisfying as it has been on most occasions previously. The film no doubt delivers on most goods but unfortunately feels slightly overlong & extended in the end.

Featuring a clever plot,…

#11 in the Reverse Hitchcock project.

My rewatch of this was initially aborted by picking up an appalling pan and scan version from my collection instead of the proper widescreen version from Sky Movies, and these things matter!

So, with the right version in the DVD player, there's the overture, the clash of cymbals, and the hint that a family would be rocked by events to come. This film, teaming James Stewart (in his third Hitchcock title), and Doris Day, remakes the 1934 film Hitch made in England with Peter Lorre as the star.

Hitch described the earlier film as the work of 'a talented amateur', and this one as the work of a professional, so let's see.

Not an…

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is a solid enough remake that does what it says on the tin. It's by no means a terrible film, but i'm hard pressed to come up with a scene or a single set piece (except for maybe the Opera house scene) that blew me away, or, was on par with Hitch's best films.

Firstly, I enjoyed this a lot more than his earlier film. The story is more coherent and easier to follow. And the pairing between Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day was really well done; they had excellent chemistry and came across as a believable couple.

The film carries across a couple of similar plot elements from the last film,…

*SPOILERS*

Forget the story and feel the suspense, as Hitch uses that old kid-in-danger set-up to serve up a succession of virtuosic set pieces.

A dead man walking through a Marrakech market place.

Jimmy Stewart trying to make a critical phone call as he's interrupted by some luvvies, and heading to a secret rendezvous tracked by noisy footsteps.

The mesmeric, pulsating Albert Hall climax, which builds from a concert performance to one of the tautest sequences in the Master's oeuvre, as Bernard Herrmann conducts, a statesman watches, and a gaunt gunman lurks.

And Doris Day belting out Que Sera, Sera at the top of her lungs, hoping it will rouse her kidnapped kid, and bring him back to her.

(There's…

I started this one years ago and fell asleep while they were still in Morocco. I enjoyed it a lot more this time out although in between some of the set pieces my attention did wander a little and I started thinking more about the depiction of American entitlement in Europe (and Africa) and marital relationships in the 50s than the fate of the competition winning child actor in peril.

On that score I was kind of expecting the kids line about his father liberating Morocco to prompt some self deprecation from Stewart but it was instead pretty much left intact and the doctor drugging his wife because he, explicitly stated, knows best about these things hasn't aged well. Indeed,…

“You English intellectuals will be the death of us all!”
Interesting that they mention Las Vegas at the beginning of this, because this is like a Las Vegas version of Northern Africa. Not a compliment!

The thesis of the morocco part of this film: look at how tall Jimmy Stewart is, and look at how Morocco is mostly made for people shorter than him!

Grace Kelly has insane range and it’s all visible here. She’s truly the underrated actor of that era (she’s not underrated in general, but you always hear Bergman or Hepburn getting far more credit than her). For my second Hitchcock in a row, Stewart is way too young for this role.

I’m astounded by the opera…

Week 42: 'The Man who knew too much' [1956]
Source: Blu-ray

I went back to re-read my review of the original version of this film, and it seems I wasn't that impressed. Unfortunately, my opinion is about the same for the remake.

The set-up is the same - here we have James Stewart, Doris Day and their son on holiday in Morocco, witnessing the death of a virtual stranger who imparts mysterious last words to a bemused Stewart regarding an impending assassination. Complications ensue when their son is kidnapped, compelling them to fly to London to save him and the intended victim.

There is certainly stuff here to like. Stewart is amiable as the doctor caught up in international espionage,…

A decent Hitchcock film that lasts a bit too long.
The famous theater scene with the gunman who's cue is a musical note is in this film and it is a terrific moment. It's very near the ending it probably should have been the finale. There must have been a simple fix to tie the later resolved issues up during this scene. It is far more exciting then what follows and it really would have gone out on a bang. It also would have managed to cut the runtime down just a bit.
The first two acts lacked the voyeurism that Hitchcock films are usually loaded with. I was really hoping for more moments where we see things that hint…

There is good dumb Hitchcock (North by Northwest) and there is bad dumb Hitchcock, and the first twenty minutes of this film were almost nothing but a racist splurge of the latter. But thankfully it soon left that behind and morphed into the former, having much more fun with its set pieces than its radically different predecessor, and beyond that into something I found completely unprecedented within his canon - a Spielbergian beating heart about the connection of family which is genuinely emotional, despite the usual conceit-driven storytelling mechanics going on behind it. Doris Day is very moving as the true protagonist of the film, and what she and Jimmy Stewart may lack in chemistry they make up for with…