The Man Who Knew Too Much Is an Early Winner For Alfred Hitchcock

This was supposed to be a fun trip to Switzerland, not the kind of trip where somebody ends up getting kidnapped. But Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edan Best, respectively) are the stars of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, so it was inevitable that some kind of misfortune would befall the duo. Specifically, they've lost their daughter, who was kidnapped in the middle of all the commotion stemming from a man getting assassinated. They're informed via writing correspondence to not involve the authorities in this matter or else their daughter will be killed. That doesn't stop Bob from doing his own detective work, in the process uncovering a larger conspiracy involving the assassination of a world leader during an opera performance.


The Man Who Knew Too Much is strung together by a series of close encounters that don't strike one as especially odd while watching the film. However, when you begin to describe them to friends and family afterwards, you being to admire how much oddness screenwriter Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis pack into this caper. Much of this strangeness comes from having the adversaries of this story occupy locations that one wouldn't normally associate with villainy. The baddies here do not operate out of a secret lair at the bottom of the ocean. Instead, they hold conversations in the back of dentists' offices or form their headquarters in churches dedicated to sun worshippers.

Such backdrops lead to some enjoyably pulpy thrills that aren't afraid to either make use of unique traits in their sets nor act grandiose. For the former quality, just look at the scene where Bill tracks down a dentist in cahoots with the people that kidnapped his daughter. Pointy dentist tools and knock-out gas, the kind of objects you'd find in any dentist office, get put to fun effect in creating tension regarding whether or not Bob will be able to procure the information he need to find his daughter. Later, a duel in a church of sun-worshippers sees Bill and his foes getting into a squabble that exclusively revolves around them just throwing chairs at each other.

Again, the concept of a scene in a serious feature dedicated to grown men just tossing chairs at each other sounds ridiculous out of context, like it's fodder you'd find in a WWE duel rather than in an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. But The Man Who Knew Too Much manages to make it work. The same can be said for making its villains appropriately unnerving. Leading these villains is Abbott, a character played by Peter Loore. I know, a 1930s/1940s movie with Loore in an antagonistic role. Next thing you know I'll be telling you Toshiro Mifune keeps popping up in Akira Kurosawa movies or that Ed Helms likes to headline crummy comedies.

In all seriousness, it's no surprise that Loore was go-to performer for these types of roles considering how consistently outstanding he was as an actor. The guy may have been frequently pigeonholed as a villain but he rarely repeated himself. Across M, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and now The Man Who Knew Too Much, Loore brought unique qualities to his performances that made it seem like he was playing an antagonist for the first time. In the case of his Abbott character, Loore lends a believable air of upper-class confidence to the part, one may be surprised that Abbott never dons a monocle! Loore consistently brings both a cool-as-a-cucumber and an intellectual nature to this role that, when juxtaposed against Abbott's devious actions, makes for a memorable villain.

Abbott gets to be at the center of a climactic shoot-out between himself, his men and the police. This sequence may stretch on for too long but it still delivers its fair share of the kind of nail-biter moments that should close out any thriller worth its sale. This closing duel also results in some of the production's most striking imagery. Such shots use of visual details that would eventually become trademarks of Alfred Hitchcock's directorial style. This auteur's love of visual elements strongly associated with German Expressionism, particularly shadows and using sets to reflect the interior mind of the characters, can certainly be seen in this finale and all throughout the rest of The Man Who Knew Too Much.