Movie Review The Man Who Knew Too Much

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Spoiler alerts Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 colour remake of a film he first made in 1934. James Stewart takes the lead first played by Peter Lorre, as a US doctor who find himself and his family tangled in an international assassination attempt while holidaying in Marrakesh. The film is best known for featuring Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be), which plays a prominent role in the film. She I playing a retired famous singer. When a Frenchman he chatted to on the bus is murdered, dressed and blacked up as an Arab, he tells the good Doctor with his dying breath that he is a spy trying to foil an assassination attempt on a VIP in London. Before James Stewart can tell the police of this his precocious brat son is kidnapped to guarantee his silence, but following leads that he just seem to get out of thin air (such as evidence that the kidnappers took a private jet to London), James Stewart goes there in pursuit. With indifference from Scotland Yard, James Stewart and his wife abandon dinner guests with a promise to return soon, as they seek out the last clue they have, leading to Ambrose Chapel, after a very funny time filling interlude in which Stewart attack a taxidermist called Ambrose Chappell (spelling his surname the same a me) thinking the poor totally innocent man is the kidnapper. The Chapel is a church where the kidnappers, disguised as the clergy, are preparing to kill a foreign Prime Minister on the climactic symbol clash during a concert at the Albert Hall. The heroes rush there, both independently getting in without paying, and a scream from Doris Day distracts the target victim, and James Stewart chases the killer to his death falling from the gods in the Albert Hall. The concert, featuring the music of movie score composer Bernard Hermann, a variation on the theme to the original movie, composed by Arthur Benjamin. Hermann is cast as the composer / conducter of the piece which plays in full without dialogue for about twelve minutes. The finale has the heroes saving their son from the embassy where Doris Day sings Que Sera Sera knowing her son will sing along to it if he hears it (because the villains are too stupid to gag him). James Stewart manages to kill the ring-leader and save his son. The couple return home to find the dinner guests still waiting though they must have been there for hours. Some intentional humour, as in the taxidermy shop fight, with stuffed swordfish, James Stewart in Marrakesh, sitting on a sofa that is clearly far too small for him, and the dinner guests having their patience stretched. Unintentional laughs – The spy in his ludicrous Arab disguise, the clichéd knife in his back, the knife falling out by itself, the police inspect the gang’s church, finding nothing even though the getaway car is plainly parked round the side, the Scooby Doo style runaround in the Albert Hall which is then largely repeated at the embassy, the heroes casually leaving their son with strangers (the kidnappers) after he witnesses a murder. James Stewart hitting his wife with heavy tranquilizers so she is barely conscious when he tells her their son has been kidnapped so she won’t get hysterical. The concert is nicely staged but overall, certainly not one of Hitchcock’s better movies. I have not seen the original version. Youtube – The Marrakesh Express Arthur Chappell