Capo
Administrator 
Posts: 7,847
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Post by Capo on Jul 7, 2008 18:21:22 GMT
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Alfred Hitchcock 1955 | USA
A remake of Hitchcock's 1934 British version: an American couple and their son are caught up in an assassination attempt to kill a high-ranking senator.
More bloated and grandiose than the original, with a surprisingly better first half than the second - the early scenes, in which Stewart and Day acquaint another couple in a restaurant, is very effective at conjuring up a comforting warmth in the midst of foreign alienation. It lacks the visual excitement of his best work, and sags a little before the end, but the Royal Albert Hall scene is brilliant, and even if the post-climax coda is too long, the "Que Sera Sera" whistling packs a powerful resonance.
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Post by svsg on Jul 7, 2008 18:34:15 GMT
The Man Who Knew Too MuchAlfred Hitchcock 1955 | USA
A remake of Hitchcock's 1934 British version: an American couple and their son are caught up in an assassination attempt to kill a high-ranking senator.
More bloated and grandiose than the original, with a surprisingly better first half than the second - the early scenes, in which Stewart and Day acquaint another couple in a restaurant, is very effective at conjuring up a comforting warmth in the midst of foreign alienation. It lacks the visual excitement of his best work, and sags a little before the end, but the Royal Albert Hall scene is brilliant, and even if the post-climax coda is too long, the "Que Sera Sera" whistling packs a powerful resonance. One of the weakest Hitchcock movies I've seen so far. Far too many cringe-inducing moments. The song "Que sera Sera" was used well though - I liked that part. |
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Post by Mike Sullivan on Jul 8, 2008 0:10:47 GMT
Cringe inducing?
i like the Livingston_Evans song, "Que Sera Sera". It just feels to me that the second half flags until the Royal Albert Hall climax. It's one of Hitchcock's greatest setups; and the film can't recover from it afterwards.
Still, entertaining, vintage Hitchcock.
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Post by svsg on Jul 8, 2008 2:55:58 GMT
SPOILERS
I can't recall the exact sequence, but in the climax scene, doesn't Jimmy Stewart push a baddie down the stairs or something - a bit anticlimatic, no?
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Post by Robert C. on Jul 8, 2008 7:19:11 GMT
Not sure what to think about this one. I've watched different segments sporadically about 3 or 4 times, I think I feel asleep once, I dunno. But Jimmy Stewart really freaks me out in his Hitchcock roles, which I think is a function of all the early movies of his I've seen in which he plays the "aw shucks" roles. His character traits are really quite similar in all of his films, the Hitchcock ones included,...and maybe that's what I find so eerie about him in roles like this and REAR WINDOW. I'd really like to look more into the director-actor relationship between Hitch, Stewart and Cary Grant. Really, he was their ticket into the world of post-modernism, right?
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