THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH B+
USA (120 mi) 1956 d: Alfred Hitchcock
The only Hitchcock remake of his own films, this lavishly colorful American version shot on location in Morocco and London (Hitchcock did not believe in ‘Scope) contrasts heavily with the 1934 British version, which the director felt was too amateurish, but was the first Hitchcock film to win acclaim outside England. From THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) to NOTORIOUS (1946), Hitchcock led a British film fascination with espionage capers, joined by fellow British directors Michael Powell and Carol Reed, often interjecting comedy into the spy thrills. A decade later, Hitchcock returned to make several successful spy thrillers, this remake which was Hitchcock’s #9 all-time box office hit, eclipsed later by the success of NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959), his #5 most successful film (Alfred Hitchcock Movies-Best to Worst-Including Box Office Results ...). This is Hitchcock’s third collaboration with James Stewart, coming between REAR WINDOW (1954) and VERTIGO (1958), and his first and only film with Doris Day, who seems to fit the cool blond profile in Hitchcock films, but her ever cheerful nature may not express a dark enough personality, as she is called upon here to utter one of film’s greatest movie screams. Her voice made the song, the only one in a Hitchcock film and one he detested, introduced in the film here “Que Sera Sera” The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), - YouTube (1:48), a huge hit in both America and England, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Song, becoming her signature song for the rest of her career and the theme song of The Doris Day Show (1968-73). The film is also notable for returning to Albert Hall, which was featured in the original, but here Hitchcock’s musical composer Bernard Herrmann actually conducts the orchestra in a 12-minute wordless sequence that builds suspense with a lurking gunman in the Hall, supposedly using 124 edits.
Stewart and Day are a happily married American couple from Indianapolis vacationing in Morocco, where she has given up her successful stage career to become a straight arrow mother and raise their 10-year old son Hank (Christopher Olsen). While Day projects the near virginal, good girl image that perfectly reflects how women were emotionally straightjacketed in the 50’s, Hitchcock allows her to stray from that role, becoming deeply distraught by the end of the picture, turning in a surprisingly complex performance that was rarely, if ever, seen again. Having spent time in Casablanca during the war, Stewart returns to the area with his family following a medical convention in Paris, where on the bus ride to their hotel they strike up a conversation with a mysterious Frenchman Louis Bernard (Daniel Gélin) who graciously invites them to dinner at their hotel. Seemingly their only friend and contact who speaks English and French in what was at that time still a French colony, Bernard backs out of his own invite at the last minute after an odd looking stranger apparently knocks on the wrong hotel room door. They, of course, amusingly fuss over what all this means, with Day suspecting some foul and nefarious activity which Stewart blatantly rejects. At dinner, they meet a British couple, Bernard Miles and Brenda De Banzie, who fast become their friends, sharing the next afternoon together at the outdoor bazaar, where Hitchcock makes his cameo appearance with his back to the camera on the bottom left hand corner of the screen while a group of street acrobats are performing. There is a sudden commotion when none other than Bernard, apparently disguised as someone else, is being chased, eventually knifed in the back, crawling towards Stewart and whispering something in his ear before dying on the spot. As the police wish to question them, the British couple offers to take Hank along back to the hotel, as the trauma of witnessing a murder on the streets could be further exasperated by a prolonged police investigation.
In something of a sleight of hand move, Hank disappears without a trace along with the British couple, while Stewart receives a call at the police station warning him not to mention anything to the police if they wish to see their son back alive. In one of the scenes of the film, Stewart grows psychologically agitated withholding the news, becoming the alienated, titled character who is forced to sedate his wife before telling her about the kidnapping and the betrayal of the British couple, concerned she would grow too hysterical. By the next morning, both are frantically out of sorts on their way to London, following clues offered in the last second confession of Bernard. Typically, in a Hitchcock film, Scotland Yard barely registers a pulse over the American kidnapping, leaving the couple to search for Hank on their own, where at the height of their most anxious alarm, Hitchcock interjects some British humor, adding several oblivious visitors from Day’s theatrical past, all here to wish her well, completely in the dark that anything’s wrong, even as first Stewart and then Day run off in search of some curiously important business, leaving them alone in their hotel room mixing drinks. As it turns out, the British couple are spies embroiled in an assassination plot expected to take place that night at Albert Hall, simultaneous to a crescendo clash of the cymbals, where Hitchcock keeps the audience’s suspense piqued throughout Bernard Herrmann’s real time orchestral performance of his “Storm Clouds Cantata” The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock - 1956) - YouTube (10:01), an often imitated sequence, like John Frankenheimer’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) or Roman Polanski’s FRANTIC (1988). Despite several memorable scenes and being one of The Five Lost Hitchcocks, it feels overlong, as there isn’t the tautness of structure, where there is clearly an upper echelon of Hitchcock films that rise above this one for suspense, excitement, depth, artistry, and shock power, though this beautifully illustrates why the 50’s may be the best working decade for Hitchcock.
