Movie – The man who knew too much (1934)

Movie – The man who knew too much (1934)
Score : ?/10
Year : 1934
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country : USA
Language : English
Duration:1h15
Writers : 
Charles Bennet & D.B. Wyndham-Lewis (story) ; Edwin Greenwood & A.R. Rawlinson (scenario) ; Emlyn Williams (additional dialogues) 

This movie serves as a first, rather mediocre, draft. The idea is good: a couple learns about an assassination plot, after someone who knew about it and couldn’t warn the people concerned in time had been shot. On their turn, the couple is warned not to divulge the plot, or else… Someone, evidently, has an important leverage on them.


However, the execution of this movie leaves much to be desired. First, the movie is too short to truly develop any kind of strong suspense, nor emotional attachment to the characters. Second, the editing cuts too abruptly, far too often. It creates a false pace, and distracts.
Thirdly, the acting, like many movies of this period, isn’t quite profound – but, I understand that for 1930’s, this was rather ‘’good’’.

The score is horrible, Hitchcock’s biggest flaw: he rarely chooses that one properly.
There is a really badly made and quite unbelievable ‘hypnotism’ scene which I found hilarious, and accidentally, the highlight of this movie: it’s just SO bad, that it becomes laughable. I don’t think it was the intended effect.

The general shootouts during the last… 10 or so minutes didn’t convince me of realism; it actually bothered my ears to hear all those loud pops and I had to lower the volume. The person who saves the day, luckily, isn’t the one expected: the surprise was agreeable.
As quite often, there is too much fur.

I think watching this movie, on a better quality DVD or BD transfer than the one I had to suffer through would be a good introduction to Hitchcock’s idea… and then move on to his very own remake from 1956 – it took the master’s revisiting to beg our pardon for this inferior draft.

Starring : Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Frank Vosper, Hugh Wakefield, Nova Pilbeam, Pierre Fresnay, Cicely Oates, D.A. Clarke-Smith, George Curzon