- In addition to being the direct ancestor of its eventual remake, The Man Who Knew Too Much is also the obvious spiritual predecessor of all Hitchcock films in which completely innocent and ordinary people are suddenly forced into dangerous and extraordinary situations. Like much of Hitchcock's body of work, this film is an entertaining combination of suspense, action, and the occasional bit of humor. In fact, I find this to be Hitchcock's earliest uniformly enjoyable film. When you consider that his latest uniformly enjoyable film, Frenzy, was made nearly 40 years later, you get a clear idea of just how expansive the director's career really was.
- At the film's start, the Lawrence family is on vacation in the Alps. As Jill Lawrence (Edna Best) competes in a shooting competition, her husband Bob (Leslie Banks) is left to care for their rather bratty daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). In fact, theirs is a rather interesting family dynamic as Jill dances the night away while Bob sits knitting, although he eventually uses the yarn to good comic effect. Their amusingly segregated evening out is interrupted, however, by the sudden assassination of a casual acquaintance, Louis (Pierre Fresnay). Louis' dying request is of course that they retrieve a hidden message from his room and pass it along to the British consul. That's when the fun begins.
- After Bob manages to smuggle the message out of Louis' room, they are contacted by someone who has kidnapped their daughter. Surely they recognize the voice as that of the distinctive Mr. Abbott (Peter Lorre), whose gray-streaked hair is a sure indicator of trouble. As it happens, Abbott is behind a plan to assassinate some high-ranking ambassador, but the Lawrences are more worried about finding a way to get their daughter back. Fearing to involve the police, Bob and Clive (Hugh Wakefield), Betty's uncle, strike out to solve the riddle of the message. This is one of the more entertaining parts of the film, as their investigations lead them to an anesthesia-fueled battle with a crooked dentist and a memorable chair-tossing fight in a church.
- The centerpiece of the film is the famous assassination attempt at Albert Hall, and it is a scene that reflects Hitchcock at his most suspenseful. While the remake (which I'll eventually review) also handled this scene quite well, the original leaves very little to be desired. The ingenious invention here, of course, is that the audience knows precisely when the gun is going to be fired. The anticipation is naturally further amplified by the accompanying musical crescendo, and the result is a very exciting scene. The remainder of the film is a well-handled, but more stereotypical, shootout that predictably gives Jill the chance to demonstrate her outstanding markswomanship. Abbott, on the other hand, rather desperately opts to make that journey "from which no traveler returns"...until the remake, I suppose.
- This was Peter Lorre's first English language film.
- I don't think Hitchcock cameoed in this one.
- Since I wrote this review, I saw Family Plot. Much to my surprise, it is also uniformly enjoyable, even if it is not one of the director's great films.
