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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

Cymbal-ism

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Man Who Knew Too Much on DVD

Hitchcock remade his 1934 film in full color and with box-office stars Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. Each version has certain elements superior to the other, but both films rank as minor Hitchcock works. While on vacation in Morocco, a couple's child is kidnapped after a dying spy whispers an important tidbit in Stewart's ear. The film won an Oscar for Doris Day's song "Que Sera, Sera," which Hitchcock abhorred, and master composer Bernard Herrmann appears as the orchestra conductor in the climactic Albert Hall sequence.

Starring: James Stewart, Doris Day, Brenda de Banzie, Bernard Miles, Ralph Truman, Daniel Gelin, Mogens Wieth, Alan Mowbray, Hillary Brooke, Christopher Olsen, Reggie Nalder, Richard Wattis, Noel Willman, Alix Talton, Yves Brainville, Carolyn Jones
Written by: John Michael Hayes, based on a story by Charles Bennett, D.B. Wyndham-Lewis
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
MPAA Rating: PG
Running Time: 120 minutes
Date: June 7, 2001