Friday, February 20, 2015
"The Man Who Knew Too Much" (two films): Hitchcock uses music skillfully to make a point very relevant to today's crisis
Not often is a major symphonic work composed for a movie and
its climax worked into the plot, but Alfred Hitchcock accomplished this with
Australian composer Arthur Benjamin and his “Storm Clouds Cantata”, for both
versions of the classic and now very pertinent mystery “The Mann Who Knew Too
Much”.
I’ve seen the 1956 film on television before, and will return
to it on my Wordpress blog. But tonight I watched the Netflix disk of the 1934
film, in grainy black and white.
Leslie Banks and Edna Best play Bob and Jill Lawrence, on a
ski vacation in Switzerland. Jill loses
a clay pigeon shooting contest to a stranger Abbott (Peter Lorre) after being
contacted by a stranger Louis (Pierre Fresnay).
Jill is dancing with Louis when he slumps over, from a bullet through
the window (eerily reminding one now of Copenhagen). He gives her a note of an assassination plot
against a head of state to happen at a concert in London. But then their daughter is kidnapped, to keep
the couple silent.
The plot line is well known for showing how an ordinary
person or couple can be accidentally caught up and become a pawn in a foreign
struggle. But the couple had not sought attention. Since Bob has a family to protect, he feels
he cannot cooperate with police, the goon idea usually known in Mafia movies
later.
The villains have a bizarre religious cult, which again
could be compared to Waco or to Jonestown, or even ISIS.
During the concert, which occurs about an hour into the
film, Jill deflects the assassination at the moment of climax of the
music. The movie denouement leads to a
tremendous shootout in primitive London streets, before the villain kills
himself when cornered. It sounds too familiar
by today’s headlines. But maybe living
as a “know it all” can be dangerous.
The film has some memorable lines, such as one about not
having children. There is a curious
scene with an electric train, that looks like the Mars train I had as a boy,
but running on an elevated track. Later,
Abbott takes on a disguise by going to the dentist, strangling and then masking
him with laughing gas, a scene that reminds one of “The Clutching Hand” (which
ran on “Movies for Kids” in the 1950s) and even the first “The Little Shop of
Horrors” movie with the scene of the masochist and sadist.
Labels:
Alfred Hitchcock,
classic films,
classical music,
cults,
mystery
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