The Man Who Knew Too Much

Hitchcock gives us a man inside a spy movie who doesn't yet know how to watch a spy movie.

Well, and that's Hitchcock's modus operandi, right? We see that North by Northwest, The Lady Vanishes, the two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and almost all of his espionage movies.

And as we just said about Condor a minute ago, it is a good trope.

Great one.

okay so uh you've got as i said for me and i i wrote this down so i'll say it a normal day is interrupted for an ordinary person and faith bestows upon them the extraordinary duty of being the only person who can save the day or in extreme situations save the world accidental underdogs who have nothing going for them but their innate decency tenacity and ingenuity So it's not really for me like Die Hard because he's a cop and that kind of is in his purview to do that, even though he is like a true underdog type of hero or Ripley who is an astronaut and put into this, you know, going from third in command to being the last survivor of the Nostromo or whatever.

For me, the ones I've written down here, Last Starfighter, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Cool Runnings, School of Rock.

romancing the stone.

You know, you've got kind of ironic heroes.

This film is a classic tale of mistaken identity, a guy who gets caught up in something that he's not even supposed to know about.

Very much like North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much, even its themes of surveillance and privacy echo back to Rear Window, one of the greatest films about voyeurism.

This is all to say, I came to this film much later than its original theatrical release.

I came to it at a time when I could appreciate all the great things there are to appreciate about it.

Uh, but even Psycho and Rear Window, it's always suspenseful.

Um, obviously it's, like, Hitchcock, right? But, um, but I mean, I even, like, I'm blown away by the, uh, um, The Man Who Knew Too Much, right? Is that the...

Or, or, or, or, uh...

No, no, no, North by Northwest, sorry.

So it's not as exciting.

But if you have to start watching Hitchcock, I would suggest my very favorite, which is The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The Man, okay.

The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The title is so powerful.

Yeah,

Again, I had that on Criterion.

So, you know, and of course, who hasn't seen, you know, I've seen both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

And let's see, North by Northwest, I've seen multiple times in theaters.

Let's see, I've seen...

Investigators attributed this to a deep-seated cultural hesitancy toward law enforcement and blatant witness intimidation.

In fact, according to reporting by Tom Kizia, one female witness fled town after receiving a threatening call that referenced the film, The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The caller warned her that she was now the woman who knew too much.

Detectives looked into various theories, from money laundering at the restaurant to professional jealousies within the community.

Like an acted out documentary, but it was fine.

Uh, and then I watched The Man Who Knew Too Much by Alfred Hitchcock, the original one, which he later did.

He redid again with James Stewart.

Hmm.