The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock
Written By: Charles Bennett, D. B. Wyndham-Lewis
Starring: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Nova Pilbeam, Frank Vosper
Length: 75 min.
Genre: Crime Drama
The daughter of a couple on a trip to Switzerland is kidnapped when her parents come into possession of information concerning a planned international crime. He father doesn't talk to the police, on the orders of the kidnappers, but tries to find his daughter on his own.
It's hard to judge a movie like this on its own merits, considering many aspects of it has been parodied for longer than I've been alive. There were a few Calculon style dramatic pauses that I'm sure were dramatic back in 1934, but now are just comically bad.
Trying to put things like that aside, I thought the movie was good-ish. It was fast paced, but made a few leaps in logic to keep the pace up, and I thought it was well acted. It still feels like during this time, Hitchcock still hadn't quite become "Alfred Hitchcock". If I watched this movie without knowing who the director was, I would never have guest Hitchcock. It was just indistinguishable from many of the other movies I've seen. I might even say that Hitchcock at this stage of his career was simply mimicking other directors and hadn't yet begone to try to find his own style.
Overall it was a decent, well acted crime thriller, but had a feeling of blandness to it.
My Rating: 6/10
IMDB User Rating: 6.9/10 (15k votes)
Rotten Tomatoes: 88% Critics (28-4), 67% of Audience (3.5 / 5 ; 8k votes)