The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) Film Review

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) Director: Alfred Hitchcock

“Was it because your child had been… kidnapped?”

In Francois Truffaut’s famous 1962 interview with Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock remarked that he considered The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) to be merely the work of a talented amateur. He later famously remade the film in 1956, a lengthier version starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. Hitchcock very much preferred the remake, a fact he made quite clear in his later career. Note that The Man Who Knew Too Much holds nothing in common with the G.K. Chesterton collection of short stories of the same name. Apparently, Hitchcock held the rights to the title of the book. At any rate, this was Hitchcock’s first film produced through England’s Gaumont Studios (previously, all his early films were made through British International Pictures, or BIP). This was also Hungarian-born Peter Lorre’s first English language movie. Having recently fled Nazi Germany, his English was still poor and he worked hard to phonetically pronounce his lines correctly.

Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edna Best) are on a ski trip to the winter wonderland of St. Moritz, Switzerland –where Hitchcock once took a trip with his wife– joined by their spoiled young daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). At the resort, they enjoy watching a downhill ski jump, narrowly avoiding an accident when Betty’s dog runs out into the runway just as a Frenchman named Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay) comes flying down. One person of note among the crowd is a jovial German man holding a chiming watch –he shares an “awkward moment” as his eyes meet Louis, but then he putters on. At the resort, Jill proves herself to be a remarkable shooter of clay pigeons, facing off against a sharpshooter named Ramon, while Bob seems to prattle on with inane witticisms (when asked permission to stay up late by his daughter, he simply defers to his wife). These opening scenes are fanciful and carefree. Jill misses her clay pigeon when the German man displays his chiming watch to Betty, and Jill openly flirts with various men while Bob pretends to ignore the situation and deflect with comedy (the British are praised for their comedy, even though Bob has clearly been emasculated and disrespected).

Later, they befriend a man at the hotel –a Frenchman named Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay). That evening, amidst dancing and revelry, their new friend Louis is shot through a window by an unknown assassin while he dances with Jill (Bob sits at the table with Betty, fussing over Jill’s knitting for Louis, while Jill comments that British men like her husband are “too cold”). As Louis collapses due to the bullet wound, he quietly reveals a secret to Jill about a note in his room hidden inside a brush that needs to be delivered to the British consulate, particularly Mr. Gibson of the Foreign Office, which reveals a planned crime is set to take place, an assassination of a foreign dignitary named Ropa. This sets up a classic Hitchcockian motif as an ordinary couple becomes accidentally swept up in an extraordinary plot of international espionage. Why should the Lawrences care if Ropa is killed? Apparently, it echoes the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand which sparked World War I. Meanwhile, a criminal sun-worshipping cult kidnaps the Lawrence’s daughter, Betty, threatening to kill her if the couple reveals any secret information they might know to the police. Therefore, of their own accord, Bob and his friend Clive (Hugh Wakefield, renowned for his comically bumbling performance in The Lady Vanishes) decide to secretly track down Betty but the trail leads to a strange underground temple “The Tabernacle of the Sun” in London led by a sadist named Abbott (Peter Lorre) –the very same jovial German man from St. Moritz. They face many twists and turns including an amusing initiation by a hypnotist which renders Clives mind “blank” as well as an ominously villainous dental clinic led by George Barbour in Wapping. Eventually, Bob is kidnapped in a clumsy scene of chair-throwing inside the temple, and after spotting an Albert Hall ticket inside Ramon’s pocket, Bob tells Clive to spread the word to Jill. She attends the performance at the Royal Albert Hall where –amidst considerable tension– she prevents the planned assassination attempt of Ropa, the European dignitary. She screams at the last moment, disrupting and distracting the hired gunman Ramon, who then flees while Jill, a skilled marks-woman, shoots him dead off a rooftop while he attempts to snatch Betty. The police chase the sun-worshipping cult to their flat and an extensive shootout ensues. Eventually, Abbott commits suicide while Betty is reunited with her parents (thanks to her mother Jill).

Rife with understatement and black comedy, The Man Who Knew Too Much is far from Hitchcock’s best film, but the idea of distraction and misdirection offers a brilliant string of parallel bookends to the film –in the beginning, Jill Lawrence is distracted by Abbott’s chiming watch which prevents her from shooting a clay pigeon in her match against Ramon, whereas in the end, Jill distracts Ramon by screaming during a performance at the Royal Albert Hall which prevents him from killing Ropa. Early flashes of the Master of Suspense can be seen here, particularly in the scene at the Royal Albert Hall wherein Jill fades in and out of consciousness while the camera blurs and quickly cuts between scenes of a ruffling curtain, the European dignitary, and the gun slowly moving stage-right. The tension that builds in this film is palpable, however I would submit that Hitchcock offers better espionage tales in The 39 Steps (1935), Notorious (1946), and North by Northwest (1959). The most piquing character for me in The Man Who Knew Too Much is Jill Lawrence –a surprisingly confident and independent woman for a film released in the ’30s, who, despite being married, openly flirts with other men, joking with her husband about sleeping around, as Bob quite evidently been cuckolded. She serves as the key character in the story –it is she who first receives the secret classified information that leads to this wild adventure, and it is she who obstructs the gunman Ramon in the Royal Albert Hall, before shooting him by herself when all the male policemen prove inferior. Her skilled background as a shooter saves the day, while her husband lies passed out on a staircase. The idea of emasculation is rather fascinatingly employed in this film as a subtle critique of the enfeebled, bumbling British gentlemanly class. A similar critique can also be found in other Hitchcock classics, like The Lady Vanishes.

Based on the notorious Siege of Sydney Street in 1911, the end to this film gets a bit long in the tooth with an extended shootout scene, and some of the cuts and dialogue throughout the film are a bit choppy, but there are a variety of clever gags employed here, as well –for example, Bob goes incognito as an evil dentist, fooling others by pointing a bright light in their direction to distract them (foreshadowing of Rear Window), and in another scene another, Bob and Clive are found singing secret messages to one another inside the temple of the sun cult. However, the true shining light in The Man Who Knew Too Much is Peter Lorre who plays the deviant, scarred, and ruthless yet charismatic villain Abbott. Lorre’s presence in any scene completely transforms and elevates The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Over the years many stories have surfaced of behind-the-scenes antics on The Man Who Knew Too Much which have become the stuff of Hitchcock legend. Apparently, both Hitchcock and Lorre shared mutual love of practical jokes and subtle jabs at one another. When Lorre complained about his suit at one point, Hitchcock ordered him an infant-sized suit as recompense. At another point, Hitchcock had a full-sized horse deposited into Lorre’s flat (the animal proceeded to eat his furniture and defecate all over the floor). In response, Lorre arranged for fifty canaries to be unleashed inside Hitchcock’s flat (perhaps future inspiration for Hitchcock’s The Birds).

Debates continue to this day over which version of the The Man Who Knew Too Much is superior. Defenders of the 1956 remake have included Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto, and even Hitchcock himself; while stalwarts of the 1934 original have included the likes of Guillermo del Toro and a whole slew of British critics.

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Credits:

• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Written by: Charles Bennett, D. B. Wyndham-Lewis, Edwin Greenwood (scenario), A. R. Rawlinson (scenario)
• Produced by: Miichael Balcon (uncredited)
• Starring:
  • Leslie Banks…..Bob Lawrence
  • Edna Best…..Jill Lawrence
  • Peter Lorre…..Abbott
  • Nova Pilbeam…..Betty Lawrence
  • Frank Vosper…..Ramon Levine
• Cinematography: Curt Courant
• Edited by: Hugh Stewart
• Music by: Arthur Benjamin
• Distributed by: Gaumont-British Picture Corporation

Other Notes:

• Hitchcock Cameo: Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo appears 33 minutes into the film. He can be seen crossing the street from right to left in a black trenchcoat before Bob and Clive enter the chapel.