THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 918, 15 March 1957, Page 9

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

(Paramount-Filwite Productions) Y Cert. ] DON’T think I have ever reviewed an Alfred Hitchcock film-it’s the luck of the draw-so let me say right away that I feel something like affection for the old master, It’s the thing nowadays to say he has gone to seed a bit. Perhaps it’s true, and perhaps if I had seen his earlier version of The Man Who Knew Too Much I would agree that it was better than this one. But I didn’t, and while’ I think the new one could have been a little tighter, I enjoyed it immensely almost throughout and found the best of it delightful — intelligent, amusing, suspenseful (of course) and stylish, On holiday in North Africa are the McKennas, Dr Ben and his wife Jobetter known to addicts as James Stewart and Doris Day-and their son Hank. When a young Frenchman they meet (Daniel Gelin) tells Ben about an assassination plot Ben becomes what the title of the film calls him, and to keep him quiet Hank is kidnapped and held hostage. The McKennas are a fond couplesome warm and amusing scenes have made this clear-and Hank’s their only child. The search for him becomes the thing, with the outcome of the assassination plot to be encountered somewhere along the way. We’ve been promised this in one of those scenes played under the credit titles; and in spite of an overdone shot or two (too muci# of the choir, perhaps?), when the time comes Mr Hitch-

cock delivers the goods. The cymbals crash; the assassin fires in the crowded Albert Hall, Miss Day screams-it gets you all right. You won’t need to be told that Mr Stewart makes an engaging hero and that M. Gelin-here, for a change, a little sinister-is an actor worth going out of the way to see. For Doris Day fans I suppose the songs will be the draw, and especially the song, the haunting "Whatever Will Be," woven into the plot. But she can act, and as Jo McKenna she’s a natural and likeable wife and mother,

and most impressive in the scene when she learns that Hank has been kidnapped. Deserving mention also as villains more or less-or more and lessare Bernard Miles and Brenda de Banzie. Briefly, then, this is a film whose faults are easily overlooked, and which should be widely enjoyed.