- The basic plot of The Man Who Knew Too Much is quite similar to that of the original film. The American tourists Dr. Ben McKenna (Jimmy Stewart) and his wife Jo (Doris Day) are on vacation in Morocco with their bratty son Hank (Christopher Olsen) when they meet a suspicious man named Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin). The next day, the McKennas witness a disguised Bernard collapse at an outdoor market with a knife in his back. In the proud tradition of dying spies everywhere, Bernard whispers a few key words to McKenna just before expiring and implores the couple to get the information to British intelligence. The situation is even further complicated when the seemingly innocuous Draytons (Bernard Miles and Brenda De Banzie) kidnap Hank to keep the McKennas from talking. Now the good doctor and his wife have to find a way to save their son and, if possible, to foil an international assassination attempt in the process. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
- Still, the remake does deviate from the original in a few interesting respects, most notably in the characterization of the protagonists' marriage. In the 1934 film, the female lead (there called Jill Lawrence) was obviously the dominant partner in her marriage, in one instance dancing while her husband sat knitting. In contrast, the heroine of this piece is introduced as a perfect doormat. We learn that Jo McKenna was once a successful singer known as Jo Conway before she took her husband's name and stopped working. Okay, that sort of arrangement was pretty common in the middle of last century, but consider also the cringe-inducing scene in which Dr. McKenna sedates Jo before relating the details of Hank's kidnapping. That alone is more than enough to convince me that theirs is not an equal marriage, even by the standards of 1956. Of course, that's the whole idea, and the rest of the film gives Jo a chance to prove herself while Ben just stands around ineffectually losing his temper. I suppose it's no accident that the film's first scene shows a veil being torn off of a woman on the bus.
- Good remakes of great movies are a rare breed indeed, but The Man Who Knew Too Much definitely qualifies. The main attraction, as in the original, is the assassination scene, and is it ever amazing. Here, Hitchcock spends twelve dialogue-free minutes tuning up the audience with the "Storm Cloud Cantata" as we watch in anticipation as the assassin (the wonderfully skeletal Reggie Nalder) prepares to strike. Taken as a whole, the scene is probably the best illustration of Hitchcock's famous "bomb under the table" theory, and it works wonders. Less ambitious scenes like the fight at the taxidermist shop and the spy-run church service are also wonderful mixes of suspense and humor (the latter scene featuring an amusing riff on the original film when Doris Day's singing voice proves too powerful for passing messages on the sly). In my opinion, nobody could sum up the film better than the director himself, when he said that "the 1934 version was the work of a talented amateur, the 1956 version the work of a professional."
- I spotted Hitchcock in the crowd at the festival.
- Bernard Herrmann is shown in the film directing the orchestra.
