Review: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

In Switzerland, Leslie Banks and his sharp-shooter wife Edna Best are caught up in assassination plot when a dying secret agent whispers something into Best’s ear. The bad guys (including deadly but outwardly polite assassin Peter Lorre) kidnap their daughter to prevent them from revealing what they apparently know. Hugh Wakefield is pretty good as a friend of the family.

1934 Sir Alfred Hitchcock (“Strangers on a Train”, “The 39 Steps”, “The Wrong Man”, “Vertigo”) thriller (said to have originally been conceived as a “Bulldog Drummond” serial entry) is actually about on par with the same director’s American remake. That film was slow and long, whilst this film is slow and short, although it picks things up a bit towards the end, thankfully.

 

This one doesn’t seem to have as much feeling to it, the two parents never seem all that bothered by the kidnapping of their young girl, something the remake conveyed a bit better. This one does, however, contain Peter Lorre’s English-language debut, and despite a thick accent and poor sound, he’s excellent. In fact, the villains are more interesting than the rather boring protagonists (which was somewhat true in the remake, but to a less noticeable degree), and the dentist scene (featuring Henry Oscar, who would turn up in Hammer’s “Brides of Dracula” some 25 years or so later) is fairly memorable (and much better than the remake’s counterpart, set in a taxidermist!).

Not as thrilling or visually interesting as other Hitchcock films, but the story is still pretty good. The screenplay is by A.R. Rawlinson (“Gaslight”, “King Solomon’s Mines”), Charles Bennett (“The 39 Steps”, “Secret Agent”, “Young and Innocent”, “King Solomon’s Mines”), D.B. Wyndham-Lewis, actor-writer-director Emlyn Williams, and Edwin Greenwood (“Young and Innocent”), from a story by Bennett and Wyndham-Lewis.

Rating: C+