Popular reviews

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★½

  formative hitchcock, occasionally *brushed* with greatness. the 75-minute picture has an odd gait, but the set-pieces are among hitchcock's greatest (beyond the royal albert hall sequence, the chair brawl is a classic comic tussle), the inimitable peter lorre is a twisted villain, and the whole thing is guided by a winking wit that picks up the slack left by its logic. when it comes to early hitchcock, i tend towards his slightly more coherent fare (i.e. THE LADY VANISHES), but this has ample rewards, and the loaded criterion edition is essential for even the most casual fans.

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  Review by Todd Gaines ★★★★ 26

  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…

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★ 6

  Alfred Hitchcock's first The Man Who Knew Too Much is an exciting crime thriller that stands out as one of his first classic movies. It is filled with tense editing and gripping storytelling. The film centres on parents caught up in a crime mystery after the abduction of their daughter. While the film is a little slow at first it picks up dramatically in the second half. An assassination scene set in the Royal Albert Hall is a quintessential example of a Hitchcock set-piece. His love of iconic landmarks is present, as is the sense of mystery and thrilling tension. The way the sequence reaches a musical crescendo just as the crime occurs is brilliantly done, and proves how well…

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★ 41

  Hitchcock might have been, on his own admission, a rank amateur when he took his first stab at “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” But, he was working with an natural born pro.

  That would be Peter Lorre; here, in his first English language role, after fleeing Germany as the Nazis took power. Fresh off imbuing fear in the world with his turn in “M,” Lorre here reveals that curiosity and fascination are the basis of interest and affection. An idea - not too far removed from Hitchcock’s own artistic psychosis. 

  As shot by the director who adored stoking confusion between romance and revenge, Lorre, in “Too Much,” is nearly a substitute protagonist to the piece; despite playing an assassin…

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  Review by san ★★★

  An early Hitchcock film that contains noticeable flaws but still has ambition and heart. While a few technical aspects (such as the camerawork and the editing) are excellent at building suspense, there’s a couple of scenes that are weakly executed. Even so, the awkwardness did make me chuckle and the opera scene practically makes up for the whole movie...so I can’t exactly say I had a bad time with this one.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ 6

  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…

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  Hitchcock went on to remake this film, so obviously he wasn't really happy with it. Certainly he could have gotten more out of the concept, but the original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is still a good little thriller. It gets straight into it - a man is assassinated, which leaves a British couple tasked with stopping another assassination, and rescuing their kidnapped daughter. The film is only seventy five minutes long and moves at quite a pace. It has a sort of weird jokey tone, despite the gravitas of the plot which is compared with the scenario that kicked off The Great War. There are some very good set pieces - highlights include hypnosis, a chair…

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  Review by Sam Thompson ★★★½

  Hitchcock’s first incarnation of The Man Who Knew Too Much is a quick dose of suspenseful espionage that sees Hitchcock bring that something extra to the story. There is a a bonus level of charisma with this early Hitchcock flick as there are memorable locations and characters. Like I love the crazy chair throwing scene in the church lol. The pacing never drags as it moves at a brisk pace. Peter Lorre is the standout from the decent cast and is excellent as the slimy villain. To be honest though, half of it is just the iconic look of his face on his egg head. I mean, look at the poster lol.

  Simple and effective, the original The Man Who Knew Too Much is a good time and an impressive exercise for Hitchcock before his move to Hollywood.

  Hitchcock Ranked List

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  Review by {Todd} ★★½

  "I'm sorry Mr. Gibson but we're not interested" -Jill,

  - Hitchcock: boxd.it/3AYC0

  Forgettable.

  I find this boring. There are flashes of brilliance and some of the set-pieces are pretty cool but as a whole it's got a really thin plot and a weird half comic half drama tone that didn't completely work for me. I don't know if it's just the editing or the script but at times I found it hard to follow for no good reason.

  For me, so far, it's lesser tier Hitchcock.

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  Review by Will ★★½ 5

  - Alfred Hitchcock Ranked - 

  I couldn't really get into this one. It didn't help that the restoration wasn't the best. You could clearly tell that it was a Hitchcock film but it didn't have the gripping nature that his later films have.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 3

  62/100

  Superior to the American remake, markedly inferior to Hitchcock's subsequent '30s comedy-thrillers. The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes subsist on the flying sparks between men and women unexpectedly thrust together by circumstance; here, the couple is long married and largely uninterested in each other apart from some good-natured mock jealousy, and neither Leslie Banks nor Edna Best can find much to do. Fortunately, Hitch keeps the pace crisp enough to forestall boredom, and he has one of early cinema's great scene-stealers in Lorre, who somehow manages to convey an exquisite sense of reptilian disdain despite reportedly speaking all of his lines phonetically. And for all its bloodlessness, the climactic gunfight is amazingly brutal and chaotic, one of the least movie-ish ever filmed. (Pretty much the only recent example I can think of that compares is The Proposition.) Hitch did improve the Albert Hall cymbal crash the second time around, though.

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  Review by Jamelle Bouie ★★★½ 1

  Peter Lorre had one of the best faces in cinema.

  Oh, also, the entire opera sequence is dope as hell.