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The Man Who Knew Too Much1934 UK Dir Alfred Hitchcock Cast Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre IMDb |
Early Hitchcocks strike me as being overly concerned with the boring technique of constructing mystery plots, and lack the inventiveness and pace and smart humor of his later work. Indeed the humor here is as flat and awkward as the “tense moments” it’s meant to relieve. Many wasted opportunities that stick out particularly because they remind me of what he later did with similar set-ups; for example, the Albert Hall scene lacks all the tension and interest of the auction in North By Northwest or the Mr Memory show of The 39 Steps, this film’s immediate follow-up. Most of what is interesting, and at least camp-level effective, in this routine genre film lies in the gradual initiation into the world of the bizarre assassination plotters, and particularly in Peter Lorre’s character, who gets his first English-language role here and is still doing good trade on his M creepiness.
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