Synopsis
While vacationing in St. Moritz, a British couple receive a clue to an imminent assassination attempt, only to learn that their daughter has been kidnapped to keep them quiet.
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Cast
- Leslie BanksBob Lawrence
- Edna BestJill Lawrence
- Peter LorreAbbott
- Frank VosperRamon Levine
- Hugh WakefieldClive
- Nova PilbeamBetty Lawrence
- Pierre FresnayLouis Bernard
- Cicely OatesNurse Agnes
- D.A. Clarke-SmithBinstead
- George CurzonGibson
Recommendations
- 91
The A.V. Club
The Man Who Knew Too Much finds the director firmly back in his wheelhouse, extracting all the wit and suspense he can from a pulpy exercise in abduction and conspiracy. - 90
Time
Alfred Hitchcock's direction, in which the story is told in sharp, abbreviated sequences gathering speed steadily toward their explosive climax, makes The Man Who Knew Too Much one of the neatest melodramas of the year. - 88
LarsenOnFilm
Director Alfred Hitchcock, who would remake the movie in 1956 with James Stewart, invests each scene with a blithe sense of fun. - 80
Variety
An unusually fine dramatic story handled excellently from a production standpoint. Built along gangster lines, but from an international crook standpoint, with a lot of melodramatic suspense added. - 80
Empire
This is a suberbly structured thriller whose excellence is aided and abetted by a spirited cast. - 75
Slant Magazine
Produced in England in 1934, The Man Who Knew Too Much was perhaps the first of Alfred Hitchcock’s films to openly attempt the autonomously cinematic, aggressively syntactic perfection with which he would later become synonymous. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
It is in this film that Hitchcock showed his development of a theme he would repeat in films to come--the innocent victim suddenly caught up in a terrifying situation with apparently no way out, coupled with breathless chases in popular public places. - 75
San Francisco Chronicle
The film is notable as the first English-language role of Peter Lorre, who is creepily appealing as the leader of the conspiracy. [03 Feb 2013, p.Q19]
