268 - The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934, United Kingdom. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

Monday, September 25, 2017

268 - The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934, United Kingdom.  Dir. Alfred Hitchcock.

The Man Who Knew Too Much opens on a stack of travel brochures.  Someone's hands, perhaps our travel agent, lifts up one at a time and shows us.  Just think of all the places we could go!

The hands settle on a brochure of St. Moritz.  In Switzerland.  How wonderful!  Let's go there.  We can bring our dog.  Just think of all the wonderful things we could do. Snow skiing.  Ski jumping.  Sharp-shooting.  Ballroom dancing.  Watching as our new friend gets assassinated.  Having our daughter kidnapped.  Being held hostage.  Getting caught up in an underground spy ring engaged in international espionage.

Is it all-inclusive?

Let's go!

Jill Lawrence is a sharp-shooter.  She engages in a friendly competition with fellow shooter Ramon Levine.  Louis Bernard is a ski jumper.  He is mid-jump when Jill's daughter Betty's dog runs out in front of him.  There is a collision.  Yet everyone is OK.  A man named Abbott shows Betty a pocket watch.  It makes a chiming noise as Jill shoots her skeet.  It interrupts her.  She misses.  Everyone is there.  Jill's husband Bob.  Abbott's nurse Agnes.  Life is good on holiday.

They go dancing.  Jill brings her knitting.  She dances with Louis.  She teases her husband.  Acts as though she is flirting with Louis.  Bob plays along.  He and Betty taking the knitting and tie the open end to the back of Louis' suit.  He unravels it as he dances.  The yarn creates a maze which entangles everyone on the dance floor.

A hole appears in the window where a silent bullet has pierced the pane.

A red circle appears on Louis' chest, where the silent bullet has pierced a vein.

He clutches.  He looks.  He apologizes.  "I'm sorry," he says, and then gives instructions to Jill.  A piece of paper is hidden inside a shaving brush in the medicine cabinet of his hotel room.  Please get the information contained on it to the British consul.

Jill tells Bob.  Bob sneaks into Louis' room.  Bob finds the paper.  Abbott and company kidnap Betty.

The vacation ends on a down note.

Back home the Lawrences receive a phone call.  If you want to see your daughter alive again, you will not relay this information to anyone.

The detective is already standing there with them.  They refuse to give him the information.  They want to see their daughter again.  However, the detective does have the call traced, and they learn it came from Wapping.

Bob and his friend Clive go to see.

They find the dentist's office.

They find the temple of Sun Worshippers.

Jill finds Royal Albert Hall.

There is a climactic moment during the concert, and later a shoot-out.

I wonder if Jill will use her sharp-shooter skills.

While Hitchcock referred to The Lodger (1927) as the first Hitchcock film, this is the one that fully realizes the suspense genre that he would employ for the rest of his career.

Peter Lorre plays Abbott.  The German actor who stunned the world in Fritz Lang's 1931 crime drama M, made fifteen films in his home country before escaping to England.

He would move on to America and become a star for Fox as Mr. Moto (in 8 films); play the lead villain in what some identify as the first film noir, RKO's Stranger on the Third Floor (1940); become a long-time staple for Warner Bros, including supporting Humphrey Bogart in films such as The Maltese Falcon, All Through the Night, Passage to Marseilles, and Casablanca, as well as supporting Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace; appear in adventure films (and even musicals) in the 1950s, and horror movies in the 1960s.  He is one of the great character actors.

Peter Lorre learned English to make this film!  And he made this film even before he fully knew how to speak it.  He memorized lines that were not yet a part of his vocabulary.

And yet he delivers them with the ease of a native speaker, and his performance is nuanced and riveting.  Through gentility he conveys menace.

The film is funny, with sight gags and verbal jokes, and it is suspenseful, with characters not knowing what they are getting into.  It contains memorable set pieces, physical action, and human emotion.

Both Alfred Hitchcock and Peter Lorre are on their way to beautiful careers.