Peter Lorre makes an excellent villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s first version of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Tuesday, March 22, 7:30 & 9:00
Series continues through March 31
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

Alfred Hitchcock’s first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much set off a flurry of successes (The 39 Steps, Secret Agent, Sabotage, Young and Innocent, and The Lady Vanishes) that led to his move to Hollywood. In St. Moritz during a winter sports competition, Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay) is participating in the ski jump, while his friend Jill Lawrence (Edna Best) is battling Ramon (Frank Vosper) in a shooting contest. At a dance party that night, Louis is murdered, but not before giving secret information to Jill’s husband, Bob (Leslie Banks). It turns out that Louis was a spy, and Ramon and his associates, including the villainous Abbott (Peter Lorre, displaying terrific two-toned hair), need to make sure that no one else finds out about their nefarious plot, so they kidnap the Lawrence’s precocious young daughter, Betty (Nova Pilbeam), to prevent Bob from talking to the police or the British government. Bob decides to play secret agent himself, enlisting family friend Clive (Hugh Wakefield) to follow the trail to reveal the evil plans while also trying to save Betty. Written by Charles Bennett, who scripted many of Hitchcock’s early British films, and D. B. Wyndham-Lewis, The Man Who Knew Too Much is an exciting thriller filled with light humor and an overabundance of charm; for example, when Betty ruins both Louis’s and her mother’s chances at victory, they shake it off as if it were funny, which it actually isn’t. But the suspense scenes work well, including one set in a dentist’s office in addition to the final shoot-out. Lorre is particularly effective in his first English-language role, which he performed phonetically. The Man Who Knew Too Much is screening March 22 at 7:15 at Anthology Film Archives as part of its “Auto-Remakes” series, comprising works that were remade by the original filmmakers, and will be followed at 9:00 by Hitchcock’s 1956 version, which stars James Stewart and Doris Day as the unsuspecting couple suddenly caught up in international intrigue. (Hitchcock had told François Truffaut that he felt the original was the work of a talented amateur, thus the remake.) The series also features such “auto-remakes” as Yasujiro Ozu’s I Was Born, But… (1932) and Good Morning (1959), Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra (1941) and Colorado Territory (1949), John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953), Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember (1939 and 1957), and other reworkings by Ken Jacobs, Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, and Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz.