The Man Who Knew Too Much

Classic Hitchcock from the early Thirties and the one that put the director on the international map! The plotline here was to become a familiar motive is later Hitchcock movies and involves a couple of innocents who get entangled by no fault of their own in a ring of espionage.

Charming English couple Bob and Jill Lawrence (Leslie Banks and Edna Best) along with their teenage daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam) are vacating in Switzerland, where crack-shot Jill participates in a clay pigeon shooting competition. At the hotel they get friendly with Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresney), a seemingly jolly Frenchman. A short while later, Bernard is murdered but manages to whisper something secretive into Bob’s ear before he dies. Unfortunately this scene is witnessed by some nasty foreign agents who decide to kidnap the couple’s daughter in order to prevent them from spilling the beans. The secret message is a plot to assassinate a diplomat during a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Obviously unable to get the police involved, the couple are forced to take matters into their own hands leading towards the first showdown in said concert hall – a scene replete with typical Hitchcockian touches. From there, Bob and Jill track the ‘bad guys’ – led by the sinister Abbott (Peter Lorre) - to seedy Wapping where the assassins have their hide-out in a temple would you believe it, belonging to a sun-worshipping cult. While Betty is already held captive in the strange place, Bob enters in the hope to rescue his daughter but is kidnapped by the gang. Luckily he manages too escape and finds himself in cohorts with the police, leading up to the climactic shoot-out a la ‘Siege of Sidney Street’. Of course, thanks to crack-shot Jill (yes, her again) Betty’s capturer is shot dead and the girl is freed. As for Abbott, he rather commits suicide than give himself up.

It is interesting to note that this was Peter Lorre’s first English-speaking role, whose knowledge of the language was minimal and thus had to learn his lines phonetically. There was a certain Continental air about Lorre’s performance that would not have been feasible with an English actor in the same role. As for our leads, Edna Best’s ‘Jill’ makes for a feisty leading lady in contrast to Banks’ ‘Bob’ who comes across as the usual stiff upper lip Englishman.

This ‘British Film Collection’ Blu-ray release offers the following Special Features:

• Introduction by Charles Barr
• Aquarius: Alfred The Great – Hitchcock interview from 1972
• Image gallery
• Instant play facility