A murder. A hidden clue. A kidnapping of a child to hush potential witnesses. Sounds great right? You bet it is. It's classic old school Alfred Hitchcock and it's one helluva lighting fast paced exciting thriller highlighted by a mesmerizing unforgettable performance from the ultimate baddie Peter Lorrre. X-Games skiing. Skeet shooting like a boss. Guys wear scarfs? Dinner and smoking. Sexy dancing. Tripwire. Deadly whisper. Linguistic communications failure. Every parent's worst nightmare. Disturbing phone call. G? Really bad teeth. I think the dentist is related to Dr. Giggles. Laughing gas overdose. Imposter. Peter Lorre is the motherfucker. Secret Society Singing? Hypothesizing? Every time Peter Lorre is on the screen I can't help but smile. Chair throwing can be extremely…

Commentary watch of Criterion's track featuring film historian Philip Kemp. A few interesting points:

- For Kemp, this is the birth of Alfred Hitchcock as an auteur. It's not the director's first thriller, but after it he made almost nothing else but thrillers (with the most notable exception being the screwball comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith), and Kemp points to several of Hitchcock's signatures that couldn't be seen before this movie and can be found in many places after it.

- The film also features the first in a series of what Kemp calls active, resourceful female heroines. Jill is an integral part of the conflict and its resolution, playing an active role in discovering the assassins and stopping their…

How convenient that Peter Lorre is back kidnapping kids again in another film made by a big name director. 

Hitchcock comes through again with another crime thriller that is about a father who is trying to solve the mystery of the whereabouts of his daughter who has been kidnapped by a group of assassins. 

It’s hard not to love Peter Lorre’s performance as the guy in charge of the assassins. He makes his character intelligently intimidating. His mannerisms and menacing long stares speaks volumes. He’s a natural. As far as the father and other cast members, none stood out unfortunately. There are side characters that goes along with the story but they are so forgettable that it’s hard to care…

Film #13 of Project 30

”Tell her they may soon be leaving us. Leaving us for a long, long journey. How is it that Shakespeare says? "From which no traveler returns." Great poet.”

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier works and a film that has all the defining elements of his universe: heart-stopping suspense, a bunch of unfortunate characters who accidentally get involve in a “nasty business”, unique camera work and editing and a plot full of twists. The Man Who Knew Too Much is an exciting and decent thriller from the Master of Suspense which never fails to entertain, however it must be said that it is miles behind Hitchcock’s more acclaimed works. The film’s plot looks a bit thin…

A Year of Film History Challenge
(watching a little bit of film history month by month, decade by decade)
--
The abduction of their daughter has kept the Lawrences perpetually off balance since the day she went missing, and so it is also for the viewer of Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, an early entry from the Master of Suspense that further distinguishes him as having a relationship with the audience already quite unlike anyone else from his era.

Hitchcock makes it easy to get sucked into following his story; the camera often rolls along fluidly with the action such that we're always wondering just where we're going, or a scene will start with a tight close-up…

Here's Alfred Hitchcock in his stride, directing a suspenseful mystery thriller with all the key elements of a crime drama one has come to expect from the master. That includes an exotic location (St. Moritz), an unsolved murder, a mysterious message given to bystander Bob Lawrence (Leslie Banks), a kidnapping, an assassination plot led by a foreign agent called Abbott (Peter Lorre), a secret society, a chair fight and a shoot-out on the London streets.

There's humor, too, of course, and a beautiful starlet to fix our eyes to the screen -- Edna Best as worried mother Jill Lawrence. Hitch even manages to work a train into the story, albeit a model one. And look for the filmmaker's cameo about…

STEFAN: This Hitch has got everything! It’s got blackmail, espionage based murder-assassinations, evil dentistry, and it has that thing where you enter a weird hypno cult and you randomly start a chair fight. 

I loved the absurdity Hitchcock divulges in as he runs through his familiar themes and plot points of normal everyday becoming caught up in espionage and murder. There’s also is an inherently political bent, which seems to be more common in his early work, as it essentially acts like a wake up call to average citizen in modern world: Be aware of politics because they affect EVERYONE! Of course, this was referring specifically to World Wars and obviously not enough people got the message since another one…

Peter Lorre hadn't yet learned English when this was filmed and memorized all of his lines phonetically. He delivered one of the best villain performances of his generation without even knowing what he was saying because he was just that good.

It's far from the best of Alfred Hitchcock's works (as evidenced by the director going back to remake it 22 years later) but The Man Who Knew Too Much offers more than enough thrills and intrigue to keep audiences captivated through.

Many of the features one would expect from a Bulldog Drummond adaptation are absent, largely due to Hitchcock being forced to change the characters significantly when he lost the rights. Most notably, there's a complete lack of latent…

It's not my least favorite early Hitchcock, but it's certainly not my favorite either. This feels far too much like an experiment in layering suspense, and it's quite sterile as a result. And the experimentation isn't even great! We get several of scenes with that classic Hitchcock suspense gimmick-- we see the danger, we know it will come to a head, and tension builds as we move closer, but it's (unsurprisingly) never as potent as the scenarios he would create later in his career. By using some dreadfully sparse sound design consisting of just a few small pops at regular intervals standing in as "gunfire" and no music, Hitchcock trust his climax to stand on its own without those sonic…