The Man Who Knew Too Much [DVD]

When faced with the same story directed by the same man, the first more than 70 tears old with somewhat dated acting and a terrible, dark, fuzzy DVD transfer (in the version I watched), and the other in color, modern and slick, glossy and entertaining, with charismatic leads and 45 more minutes of screen time, which do you watch? If it weren't for the intense and lasting irritation of seeing a first-class movie terribly presented, I'd vote for Hitchcock's 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The story is the same. A couple on vacation sees a friend shot. The man gives them a message that must be delivered to Whitehall. A foreign dignitary will be assassinated during a performance in Albert Hall. The plotters, to keep the couple from stopping their plans, kidnap their child. If they deliver the message and alert authorities to the assassination, the couple's child will be killed. They decide to find their child themselves. It builds up to a crashing cantata in the Hall and then the desperate rescue of the child. Not bad at all.

In 1934 Hitchcock dishes up for us a tense thriller with the emphasis on tightly constructed sequences. The humor is there only as a counterpoint. Hitchcock moves the story briskly toward that showdown in Albert Hall, then tops that with a violent shootout that leaves bodies on the floor. Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edna Best) are an upper-class British couple, well-bred, smart, plucky and brave. Hitchcock also gives us a creepy, riveting, smiling villain in Abbott, played by Peter Lorre in his first English language film. Lorre learned his lines phonetically; he knew almost no English. Lorre focuses the film as an intense, unpredictable thriller every time he's on screen.

In 1956, Hitchcock gives us an upper-middle class American couple (James Stewart and Doris Day) with a cliché of a husband who enjoys not knowing anything about foreign cultures and an all-American corn-fed wife in serious need of medication. Hitchcock uses that extra 45 minutes on lengthy, sly humor and colorful tourist photography, neither of which advances the story. Despite Stewart's earnestly laconic performance and Day's overwrought emoting, the bones of the thriller still keep us interested. Still, I had the feeling that with the 1934 movie I was watching one of the best of Hitchcock's English movies and with the 1954 version I was watching just one of his highly professional and entertaining Hollywood hits.

To see what I mean, compare the 1934 sequence in the dentist's office - a struggle silent except for groans and the sound of laughing gas escaping - and the 1956 sequence in the taxidermist's shop. One is suspenseful, almost queasy and masterful. The other is just an excuse for a few laughs.

The clever and tense showpiece of both versions is in the Albert Hall and it works both times. The emotional conclusion, the rescue of the child, is a far different story. In 1954 we have an embassy dinner, Doris Day singly loudly and Stewart and his son walking down the stairs. It works if you have nothing to compare it with. In 1934, the nearly 15-minute shootout brings everything to a murderous climax, with ingenious rescues, violent confrontations and the emotionally satisfying fate of Abbott. His death is, well, kind of fun as well as satisfying. Hitchcock takes the time at the start of the movie to establish Jill Lawrence as a crack shot with a rifle. We learn why he did this now, and it has nothing to do with Abbott.

Peter Lorre, plus Hitchcock's way of building a clever, tense story, makes this movie a pleasure to watch. But let's not forget Leslie Banks and Edna Best. She was a competent star actress who never quite reached the top. I wonder what she might have done without such a frumpy name. She makes Jill a woman who will not have a nervous breakdown. When Jill needs to pull a trigger, she does. Leslie Banks was a fine stage actor who had a decent career in the movies. He was wounded in WWI and was left with half his face paralyzed and disfigured (not horribly but easy to notice). When he played nice guys or heroes, he showed the good side. With bad guys, he showed the damaged side. To see him use those two sides of his face as a charming host and then as a really bad guy, watch The Most Dangerous Game.

Perhaps somewhere there is a fine, restored version of this movie. If so, it would be a pleasure to watch and to own.

Just to let you know about the extras on this new edition.An introduction to the movie by film historian charles barr(3:45),Aquarius:Alfred the great-hitchcock interview from 1972(35:33)and a still gallery(0:46).Hope this helps in deciding which edition to buy.

Alfred Hitchcock may not have had that much fondness for this, his first attempt at The Man Who Knew Too Much, but history arguably shows that it is a better film that it's big budget remake.

Jill and Bob Lawrence (Edna Best & Leslie Banks) are vacationing with their daughter when they witness the assassination of a secret agent. He tells them of the whereabouts of a hidden document which must be handed over to the British Consuland learn that tells of a plot to kill a foreign diplomat in London. A spy ring kidnapps their daughter and the couple track her back to London.

Whilst not one of his best efforts, there is still much to admire from Hitchcock here. The shock of the secret agent's assassination, whilst Bob Lawrence performs a trick to him, is superbly played, especially as up to that point the Lawrence's holiday has been a distincly light-hearted affair. It's also perhaps a template for the action-adventure movies that would become Hitch's trademark, pitching the mix of comedy, romance and suspense almost perfectly.

The star of the show is Peter Lorre, in his first English-speaking role. Having learned English phonetically for the part, Lorre excels as the charming but deadly Abbot and it perhaps he, more than anything else, that secures this films superiority over the remake.