I was hugely disappointed with this.
I love Hitch. He made some of my all time favourite films, such as Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder. All absolute classics.
But this is a very inferior effort from the Master. Tedious plot, poor pacing, and characters it's hard to care about. I was really bored and found the whole thing very stagey, awkward and uninvolving.
I thoroughly disagree. Man Who Knew Too Much may not be an absolute masterpiece like Psycho or Vertigo, but it certainly ranks right up there with Dial M for Murder. I don't agree that the plot was tedious and the characters were hard to care about. I totally felt how much Ben and Jo loved Hank, how much they would do anything to get him back. No thrillers today features parents that can duplicate the urgency and hysteria on Doris when she found out about Hank. Ben was an ideal man / father who sucks it all up, all of his own pain and anguish just to make sure things get done, and he gets Hank back to his mom.
shareI agree with your criticisms but I think Hitch is overrated in general. I've seen all the films you named and Rear Window and Dial M were the only ones I really enjoyed--and even then I wouldn't call them masterpieces.
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My top 250: http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250
Hitchcock overrated? I can't believe it! I love this movie! I can't imagine anything more terrifying than having your child disappear in a foreign country while you are surrounded by weird things that seem too coincidental to be accidents. I've been watching Hitchcock's movies and TV shows my whole life, and in my opinion he is a genius.
shareIts not his finest hour - see my entry on goofs.
share"The Man Who Knew Too Much '56" is, in certain ways, UNDERrated in the Hitchcock canon, I think.
Yes, there is a "stodginess" to the piece. It is the fourth of four films in a row written by John Michael Hayes for Hitchcock(Rear Window, To Catch a Thief,and the Trouble with Harry before it) and it is of a quaint mid-fifties piece with them. Hitchcock would shortly get more "deep"(The Wrong Man) and then more "modern" with the incredible run of Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho(with The Birds as a big 60's chaser.) The Man Who Knew Too Much is "the calm before the storm."
Its the only movie that Hitchcock chose to directly remake from his own work(the British original is from 1934.) There's a reason for that: Hitchcock knew that the film had TWO, count 'em TWO, major thriller plot premises, in one package: (1) The kidnapping of a child(surefire suspense and rage against the villains) and (2) the race to stop an assassination(see: The Manchurian Candidate, The Day of the Jackal, Black Sunday.)
The film was a big hit for Hitchcock, one of his biggest. James Stewart was a big star in the fifties, Doris Day was ALMOST the big star she was going to be. The film generated a classic hit(Que, Sera, Sera) which won the Best Song Oscar(one of the few Oscars for a Hitchcock film.)
Here's an interesting comparison: Man 2(as it is called in some quarter) comes 10 years before Hitchcock's badly reviewed Torn Curtain, which also featured two big stars(Paul Newman and Julie Andrews) and one of THEM was a singer(Andrews.) What makes Man 2 "better" than Torn Curtain?
Well, take a look. Whereas the big "ballet scene" in Torn Curtain is good(check out the "freeze frame ballerina"), the concert scene in Man 2 is BIGGER...filmed on location in London at Albert Hall and with many more extras and many more shots, than the small scale soundstage sequence in Torn Curtain. Hitchcock was ten years younger, he had the stamina to make a better sequence and the backing(from Paramount) to get to fly to London to make the scene "real."
And Paramount flew Hitchcock and his cast to Morocco AS WELL AS London. This was a globe-trotting, big budget film. All the foreign locations in Torn Curtain were shown through process shots made by a second unit in Germany. Newman and Andrews(who wasn't given a song to sing, like Day) did their scenes at USC in LA and Long Beach Harbort to emulate the Iron Curtain countries.
Yes, The Man Who Knew Too Much '56, despite some stodginess(Stewart and Day are married, and never really kiss) and pacing issues, is a much bigger and better Hitchcock production than Torn Curtain, a film made deep in his period of greatest clout, commercial success and artful skill.
With at least three major Hitchcock set-pieces: the stabbing and confession of Louis Bernard(his huge mouth, Stewart's huge ear, Stewart's deep blue eyes in ultra close-up); Albert Hall, and the rescue of the little boy(another great Hitchcock staircase scene.)
Plus one of the great "quickie" Hitchcock final lines: "Sorry we're late -- we had to go pick up Hank."