The Man Who Knew Too Much [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Alfred Hitchcock, Herbert Coleman

Overview

While vacationing in Switzerland, Britons Leslie Banks and Edna Best befriend jovial Frenchman Pierre Fresnay. Not long afterward, Fresnay is murdered. He whispers a secret in Banks' ear before expiring. This is witnessed by several sinister foreign agents, who kidnap Banks' daughter to keep him from revealing what he knows.

Product Details

Release Date:	01/15/2013
UPC:	0715515100410
Original Release:	1934
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:15:00
Sales rank:	1,615

Special Features

New Audio Commentary featuring Film Historian Philip Kemp; New Interview with Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro; The Illustrated Hitchcock, an extensive interview with Director Alfred Hitchcock from 1972, conducted by journalist Pia Lindstrom and Film Historian William K. Everson; Audio excerpts from Filmmaker Fran?ois Truffaut's legendary 1962 interviews with Hitchcock; Restoration Demonstration; ; Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Leslie Banks	Bob Lawrence
Edna Best	Jill Lawrence
Peter Lorre	Abbott
Frank Vosper	Ramon Levine
Hugh Wakefield	Clive
Nova Pilbeam	Betty Lawrence
Pierre Fresnay	Louis Bernard
Cicely Oates	Nurse Agnes
D.A. Clarke-Smith	Binstead
George Curzon	Gibson
Henry Oscar	Dentist
Celia Lovsky	Actor
Brenda de Banzie	Actor
Bernard Miles	Actor
Ralph Truman	Actor
Daniel G?lin	Actor
Mogens Wieth	Actor
Alan Mowbray	Actor
Hillary Brooke	Actor
Christopher Olsen	Actor
Richard Wattis	Albert Hall Assistant Manager
Noel Willman	Woburn, Special Branch
Alix Talton	Helen Parnell
Yves Brainville	French Police Inspector
Carolyn Jones	Cindy Fontaine
Patrick Aherne	Handyman
Frank Albertson	Taxidermist
Frank Atkinson	Edgar, a Taxidermist
Walter Bacon	Church Member
John Barrard	Taxidermist Holding the Panther
Betty Baskcomb	Edna, the Church Organist
Eumenio Blanco	Arab
Alexis Bobrinskoy	Foreign Prime Minister
Lovyss Bradley	Church Member
Emlyn Williams	Actor
Bernard Herrmann	Composer
Arthur Benjamin	Composer

Technical Credits

John Michael Hayes

Angus MacPhail

Edwin Greenwood

D.B. Wyndham-Lewis

Emlyn Williams

A.R. Rawlinson

Charles Bennett

Michael Balcon	Producer
John Michael Hayes	Screenwriter
Angus MacPhail	Screenwriter
Herbert Coleman	Producer
Farciot Edouart	Special Effects
Gene Garvin	Sound Effects
Frank Carroll	Sound Effects
Alfred Hitchcock	Producer
Edwin Greenwood	Screenwriter
D.B. Wyndham-Lewis	Screenwriter
Emlyn Williams	Screenwriter
A.R. Rawlinson	Screenwriter
Charles Bennett	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Though Alfred Hitchcock would remake the movie himself in 1956 with a bigger budget, the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is arguably a more historically significant and aesthetically interesting film. It was Hitchcock's first true international hit. Though he wouldn't have a major success in America until The Lady Vanishes, Man and the subsequent The 39 Steps helped establish the director's distinctive style and lay the groundwork for his popularity. Along with Hitchcock's trademark blend of suspense and humor and blurring of the normal and abnormal, the film also features his characteristically grand showpieces, most memorably the recreation of the true-life "Sidney Street Siege" and the famous Albert Hall scene. The film was also significant as German actor Peter Lorre's first English-language part. Having fled Nazi Germany in 1933, Lorre had to learn his lines phonetically, but he steals the film as the cruel but melancholic bad guy, and his difficulties with English barely show. The actor would go on to give memorable turns in such notable Hollywood productions as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.