Stubs - The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) Starring: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Nova Pilbeam, Frank Vosper. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Screenplay by Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis. Produced by Michael Balcon (uncredited). Run Time: 75 minutes. The United Kingdom. Black and White. Thriller

While Alfred Hitchcock is probably best known for the films he made in Hollywood, he was a prolific filmmaker back in his native England. Born in 1899, Hitchcock got his start in the film business in 1919 as a title card designer. He was studying to be an engineer when he read that Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, was planning to build a studio in London and was planning to make The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli there. He made up some title card designs and sent them and they hired him.

The first film he directed was Number 13 (1922), the same year Famous Lasky pulled out of London. He went to work for Gainsborough Pictures where he was an assistant director. In 1925, he directed The Pleasure Garden, a co-production between Gainsborough and the German film company Emelka which had him working in Munich. Even though the film was a flop, Hitchcock was hired to direct a second film in Germany, The Mountain Eagle (1926), which even Hitchcock called "a very bad movie".

Things turned around for the young director with his film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), which turned out to be both a commercial and critical success. A series of films followed: The Ring 1927); Downhill (1927); The Farmer's Wife (1928); Easy Virtue (1928); Champagne (1928); and The Manxman (1929). Hitchcock made the transition to sound with Blackmail (1929) followed by Juno and the Paycock (1930); Murder! (1930); Elstree Calling (1930); The Skin Game (1931); Mary (1931); Rich and Strange (1931); Number Seventeen (1932).

In 1931, Hitchcock began working with screenwriter Charles Bennett on preparing a scenario based on the "Bulldog Drummond" series of books, written by Herman Cyril McNeile. However, the head of the British International Pictures studio where Hitchcock and Bennett worked, John Maxwell, thought the project, then called Bulldog Drummond’s Baby, was too costly to make and shelved the project.

When Michael Balcon signed Hitchcock to Gaumont-British in 1933, the studio also acquired Bulldog Drummond’s Baby from BIP. But when they couldn’t acquire rights to the Bulldog Drummond book, Hitchcock and Bennett jettisoned the Bulldog Drummond character from their screenplay. Needing a new title, Hitchcock took the name "The Man Who Knew Too Much" from a G.K. Chesterton book which he owned the film rights to.

Hitchcock worked on the screenplay with screenwriter Charles Bennett; Ivor Montagu, who became Hitchcock's supervisory producer; Angus MacPhail, who was in charge of Gaumont's story department; and Alma, Hitchcock’s wife, and frequent contributor. Hitchcock began to plan out two climatic set-pieces for the film — the assassination attempt at the Albert Hall during an orchestral performance, and a shoot-out between the police and the kidnappers. The latter was based on a real event, the notorious 1911 "Siege of Sidney Street" gunfight that took place in Stepney, London. (The siege marked the first time the police had requested military assistance in London to deal with an armed stand-off.)

Before the screenplay was finished, satirist D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, actor and playwright Emlyn Williams, playwright Edwin Greenwood, and actor-writer A.R. Rawlinson had also made contributions to the final script. While Bennett sought to downplay the contribution of the other writers, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis would receive a screen credit for his work.

Casting included French actor Pierre Fresnay, whom Hitchcock had seen in a stage production in London; Nova Pilbeam, a then fourteen-year-old actress who had been called "the world's greatest child actress" by the British press; and Peter Lorre, the Hungarian-born actor, who had found his success in Germany. His best-known film until then had been M (1931). Jewish, Lorre fled Nazi Germany in 1933, traveling first to Paris and then to London. Associate producer Ivor Montagu referred Lorre to Hitchcock.

In their first meeting, Lorre made a good impression on Hitchcock by smiling and laughing as Hitchcock talked, disguising his limited command of the English language. Originally considered for the role of the assassin Ramon, Hitchcock wanted him to play the larger role of Abbott. During filming, Lorre would learn his lines phonetically.

The film began principal photography on May 29, 1934, and wrapped on August 2.

The film opens in St. Moritz Switzerland, where Betty Lawrence (Nova Pilbeam) runs out onto the course of a ski-jumping competition, affecting the landing of Frenchman Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay). She is looking for her father, Bob (Leslie Banks), and while Louis could have been severely injured, the incident is more or less laughed off. Louis says that he’s done with jumping for the day because he has a train to catch that night. In the crowd is Abbott (Peter Lorre).

Betty (Nova Pilbeam) and her father Bob (Leslie Banks) come to watch her mother Jill (Edna Best) shoot skeet.

Bob and Betty end up at a clay pigeon shooting contest that her mother Jill (Edna Best) is competing in. She has reached the finals against a male sharpshooter, Ramon (Frank Vosper). Jill gives her daughter a brooch.

At a crucial moment, Jill is distracted and loses the match.

At the crucial moment, Jill is distracted by a chiming watch that Abbott tries to show to Betty. Jill loses, but once again, the incident is laughed off, especially when Louis arrives. While Jill and Louis openly flirt, their relationship is never really spelled out. We learn later that they’re staying at the same hotel, but they do seem very chummy for being only passing acquaintances.

Louis (Pierre Fresnay) is shot while dancing with Jill.

Later, that evening, while dancing with Jill, Louis is fatally shot. As he lies dying on the floor, he tells Jill that there is a note in his hotel room that must be delivered to the British Consul. She tells Bob, who goes and searches Louis’ hotel room, just ahead of investigators and Ramon. Bob reads the note which he finds rolled up in Louis’ shaving brush, “Wapping G Barbor Make Contact A. Hall March 21^st”.

Bob reads the note Louis was hiding.

Since they can’t retrieve the note, the criminals involved in the shooting kidnap Betty, threatening to kill her if the parents tell anyone about what they know.

In what seems almost inexplicable, the couple returns to London. The Lawrences are questioned by the police and by an official from the British Foreign Office. The latter informs them that Louis had been a spy working for the British and was trying to prevent a politically-motivated assassination of an important foreign official.

Clive (Hugh Wakefield) joins Bob on his quest.

Since it is March 21^st, Bob with their friend Clive (Hugh Wakefield) in tow, uses the clues from Louis’ note and goes to the Wapping, a district in London near the Docklands. There they find a dentist’s office with the name of George Barbor (Henry Oscar). They gain access to the office by pretending Clive needs dental treatment. When Clive is given quick treatment, Bob claims he needs help, too.

They find the dentist office in Wapping.

Once inside, he discovers that two people he’d met in St. Moritz, Abbott and Ramon, are involved in some intrigue, using Barbor’s office as a front. Bob manages to turn the table on the dentist, who tries to kill him. Using the anesthesia, Bob keeps Barbor unconscious and pretends to be him when Abbott and Ramon leave the office.

Bob turns the table on George Barbor (Henry Oscar).

Having escaped detection, Bob and Clive find a nearby tabernacle devoted to Sun Worshipping that has the same building markings as were on Louis’ note. The vaguely sinister-appearing cult members inside are suspicious of the two interlopers and refuse to let them leave. Soon afterward, Abbott and Ramon show up, and it is clear that Abbott is the gang ringleader and that Betty is being held prisoner there. Ramon, the marksman, is to be dispatched to the Royal Albert Hall to carry out the planned assassination at a concert that night. Bob manages to cause enough chaos to enable Clive to escape and to inform Jill to rush to the Albert Hall.

Bob creates a diversion by fighting using the chairs in the tabernacle.

Bob is taken prisoner and is in the room when Abbott shows Ramon the musical clue he’s to listen for to mask the sound of his gunshot. Ramon must be a quick study, because Abbott gives him one needle drop to figure it out.

Abbott (Peter Lorre) shows Ramon (Frank Vosper) the musical cue to listen for.

Jill does as instructed but soon after arriving, she is approached by Ramon who gives her the brooch belonging to her daughter. Apparently, the concert is not a sellout as she manages to get a seat near the center of the auditorium. Jill grapples with indecision about what she should do. She can clearly see the target of the assassination but her daughter’s life hangs in the balance if she makes any move. During the concert with Jill sitting in the audience and the orchestral music building up to a deafening crescendo, the pressure becomes unbearable, and Jill screams, which startles Ramon’s intended target and prevents Ramon’s shot from being lethal. After the shot is fired, Ramon rushes from the building, with the police and Jill in hot pursuit.

Jill waits in Albert Hall, unsure what to do.

Ramon returns to the Tabernacle and soon a shootout develops between police and Abbott’s gang with members on both sides being killed. Inside Bob and Betty are both being held prisoner in separate rooms. The criminals hold out until their ammunition runs low and nearly all of them have been killed. In the commotion, Bob helps Betty to get up on the roof of the building. However, Ramon follows after her and aims his gun at her.

Bob helps Betty escape to the roof, but she's not out of danger.

The police sharpshooter can’t get a clear shot on Ramon since he’s too close to Betty. But Jill, who has arrived on the scene, takes his rifle and, in a rematch of sorts, shoots Ramon dead.

Jill takes the sharpshooter's rifle and kills Ramon.

The police storm the building. Abbott is the only one of his gang still alive. He hides behind a door, but his chiming watch gives him away and he is shot and killed by police. Soon after, a terrified Betty is reunited with her parents.

At the end, Betty is reunited with her parents.

The film was released in England in December 1934 and had its general release in the US on April 15, 1935. Reviews at the time were mostly positive, with C.A. Lejeune of The Observer calling it “the most promising work that Hitchcock has produced since Blackmail". The New York Times praised the film as the "raciest melodrama of the new year.”

If you’ve seen Hitchcock’s own remake of this film The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) starring James Stewart and Doris Day, you’ll see a remarkable change in the way the director tells the same basic story, aside from the fact that the remake was in color and starred two well-known Hollywood stars. Hitchcock developed a very leisurely directing style, taking his time to set up characters and story points. As an example, the remake has a run time of 120 minutes, the original only 75 minutes.

The expanded length of the remake may have as much to do with Hitchcock’s evolving story-telling but the original film seems to be in a hurry to get from start to end, which means things get shorted sometimes. There is no time to really explain why the Lawrences are in St. Moritz. Is it a family vacation? Or is Jill there specifically to take part in what seems like an amateur skeet shoot? We’re really never sure and there is no time wasted explaining.

Everything seems to get short shrift. The initial relationship between Louis and the Lawrence family seems too intimate at first blush. He is major-league flirting with Jill, but Bob doesn’t seem to mind, as if he’s a harmless old friend that they’ve known for a long time, when, in fact, they haven’t. This might seem like a small plot point, but it might have helped better explain how much of a stranger Louis really was, especially since they don’t know his real secret.

Likewise, the relationship between Bob and Jill seems a little ill-defined. They are obviously not newlyweds and seem to spend a good deal of the film apart. To say they're reserved is an understatement.

That seems to be typical of the film; relationships are never spelled out. Clive, an old and trusted family friend, appears out of nowhere and becomes integral to the plot, but only long enough to serve a purpose and then disappears when his job is done.

The acting is fairly good, though I never really get the feeling Jill or Bob is all that worried about finding Betty. No sense of urgency from either parent. Leslie Banks, in particular, takes a very laidback approach to pretty much every situation, from a man flirting with his wife, to his daughter being held hostage, to thwarting an attempt on his own life to meeting the man who had his daughter kidnapped. I never get the sense he is ever desperate, scared or worried.

Nova Pilbeam, for all the press, has very little to do in the film after the first sequence and, even then, she comes off as little more than a spoiled brat. To be honest, none one in the cast is all that memorable, save for Peter Lorre.

Peter Lorre in his first English-language film.

Even Lorre’s performance lacks subtlety. He’s presented as being the evil leader of the assassination plot and we learn nothing more about him than we do the members of his gang. He’s so flat as to almost not be interesting. But you have to cut him some slack as this was his first English-language film. He would go on to deliver more memorable roles, after moving to Hollywood, in such films as The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1942).

Still, there are earmarks of better Hitchcock films to come. In what would become a hallmark of his Hollywood films, the most exciting scene is at the end of the film. Everything seems to be building toward the final confrontation between assassin Ramon and mother Jill. While he may have gotten the better of her on the deck of the lodge, this time her aim is true. This gives the film a good bookend.

According to a Hitchcock wiki, The Man Who Knew Too Much saw the first proper introduction of a "MacGuffin" — a storytelling device often attributed to Angus MacPhail, which appears in many of Hitchcock's subsequent films. A MacGuffin is defined as “a plot device in the form of some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation. The MacGuffin's importance to the plot is not the object itself, but rather its effect on the characters and their motivations”. In this film the MacGuffin appears in the guise of the message about the planned assassination of a foreign dignitary in London.

Hitchcock must have thought he could do better by the story but turned down the first opportunity to remake it. Producer David O. Selznick, to whom Hitchcock was under contract, bought the rights to the original movie in 1941 and urged Hitchcock to make a U.S. version. At the time, Hitchcock thought he had no new spin to put on the story and declined. Instead, he would direct Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) and Suspicion (1941). When Hitchcock was his own producer he came back to the story in 1956, looking for a picture to help fulfill his contractual obligations with Paramount Pictures.

The original The Man Who Knew Too Much may not be the greatest film Hitchcock made, but it does deserve to be viewed. There are many of the trademarks present here that Hitchcock would develop in his later films. The pace is quicker and the acting flatter, but the film has a much more satisfying ending than then his own remake in 1956.