LGM Film Club, Part 234: The Man Who Knew Too Much

Don’t think we’ve done any Hitchcock in this series, so let’s. The Man Who Knew Too Much is great, especially Doris Day’s performance. The whole film is just classic Hitchcock. If it’s not his greatest film, and it’s now, that’s because he is probably the greatest director to ever live so his top 5 films are just astounding and maybe this is a tick short of that. The only two things I will say about this is that a) for a film shot in the Cold War, the political intrigue is surprisingly vague and really never laid out except for an internal struggle within some unnamed country and b) the kid is so annoying that you end up rooting for the kidnappers. On the former issue, since this was a remake of his own 1934 film, which I haven’t seen, I guess that explains it but he changed the plot to be clearly post-World War II anyway so I don’t quite get this. In any case, it’s still a first rate movie.

Here’s probably the most outstanding use of an orchestra in film history.