Starring:
PETER LORRE,
LESLIE BANKS
EDNA BEST
Blackhawk Films brings you 1934 vintage Hitchcock, his greatest British success, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, featuring Peter Lorre as the dedicated anarchist, Abbott; Leslie Banks as the imperturbable Englishman Bob Lawrence, and Edna Best as his skeet-shooting wife, the movie upset all the 30's conventions of murder mysteries.
The New York Times reviewed it it in 1935 as ''fascinating staccato violence, a blistering style of story-telling, merging scenes so breathlessly you are always rapt and tense.''
The film, based on a Bulldog Drummond story, opens in St. Moritz. In the opening sequence, Hitchcock shows us all the Protagonists attending a winter sports competition: Abbott and his fellow anarchists; Bob and Jill Lawrence and their daughter Betty; and Louis, a skiing acquaintance. Lawrence becomes unwittingly involved with Abbott when Louis is shot.
The dying man asks that a message hidden in his shaving brush be relayed at once to the British Foreign Office. Before Lawrence can deliver the message, his daughter is kidnapped and he is warned that she will remain alive only as long as he keeps silent.
The Lawrence's return to London, where they are Questioned by Foreign Office Investigators. Even the warning that their silence would mean the death of a foreign diplomat and precipitate another war does not affect their determination to protect their child.
Hitchcock used a real-life incident as his model for the suspenseful climax to his story. In 1910, several Russian anarchists were holed up in an old building on Sidney Street in London. Winston Churchill, as Home Secretary, was called to direct their capture.
Final scenes of defeat and death for Abbott, and the split-second roof-top rescue of the kidnapped girl are Pure breath-taking Hitchcock.
Hitchcock remade THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH in 1956, with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. He says of the two versions ''The first was the work of a talented amateur and the second the work of a Professional''. Only Hitchcock would understate this 1934 Production. Blackhawk's Prints have been made from a 35mm original. with beautiful reproduction that maintains the quality of Hitchcock's film. The sound track suffers only from the actors' clipped British accents. But as with all Hitchcock movies, the action compensates for any loss of words.
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Distributed by: Blackhawk? |
This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002