The Man Who Knew Too Much

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Runtime: 76 minutes

Directed by: I presume most people know it's Hitchcock

Starring: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Hugh Wakefield, Nova Pilbeam

From: Gaumont

It's about time I saw another Hitchcock movie; this one is not one of his many classics but at least it's not bad, as I explain below: 

It's been way too long since I've seen a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock so when I saw that Turner Classic Movies would be playing this yesterday afternoon, this was the perfect time to review this for the first time... heck, I had never even seen this before. Then again I haven't seen the 1956 remake also done by Hitch, so you won't see me compare the two.

The plot is that a family vacations in Switzerland, with the matriarch of the family participating in a skeet shooting contest... if you want, you can snicker. The parents get to know someone, who is then soon shot and killed, but not before passing along a message, and it's important as it relates to the planned assassination of a country's head of state. The bad guys kidnap their daughter in an attempt to keep them quiet.

The movie is fine but when you compare it to all the classics that Hitch would do later... at least I can still say that this is fine, even if it's not one of his great movies. The story is not as engrossing as in those classics nor are the characters as well-defined and memorable. Admittedly, the daughter can be annoying; it's not the actress, but rather the role. At least I can say that the scene where the planned assassination attempt happened (the legendary Royal Albert Hall in London) was well-done and one of the villains happened to be Peter Lorre, in his English language debut, no less. His presence was welcomed by me because as typical, he did a swell job.

At least Hitch paid his dues in his native England before becoming a legend in Hollywood, and he honed his style in these early days and was able to figure out what worked vs. what didn't work. As is, this movie has everything from dentists to a random scene where a bunch of chairs were thrown. As this was only 76 minutes long, at least it was an easy watch.