The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch: From Dial M for Murder to The Man Who Knew Too Much

Welcome to our fourth installment of The Great Alfred Hitchcock Rewatch!  Today we're in the mid 1950s and still in the world of Hitchcock Greatest Hits.

Previous Installments

Intro Post

The Final Five Movies

The Wrong Man to The Birds

Here is today's batch of movies.  All of the movies are in color, and all of them are safe for the kiddos to watch.  From there the mileage varies.  As usual, we'll talk about them in the order that I saw them, which is reverse order.

Dial M for Murder (1954)
Rear Window (1954)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
The Trouble with Harry (1955)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

Spoiler rating for this post: low

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

General plot summary and trivia

Dr. Ben McKenna, his wife Jo, and their young son Hank are on vacation in Marrakesh, where they are very much fish out of water.  On the bus ride there, their son causes an incident when he stumbles and accidentally grabs a veil off a woman's face.  Another passenger, Louis Bernard, speaks both English and Arabic and smoothes the way for the family.  Louis is nice, but Jo's spidey sense tells her that he's too nice and that he's pretty nosy.  Ben thinks that Jo is blowing things way out of proportion since that's what she does.  As the plot develops we learn that Jo is a famous singer but had to give up her career a few years ago when Ben's career took them to Indiana, and we get to sit in on her bedtime ritual with Hank where they sing Que Sera Sera to each other.

The next day the family is innocently wandering around town when Louis is stabbed, and he runs up to Ben.  As he dies he whispers details of an assassination plot in London, which means that Ben is now The Man Who Knows Too Much.  The police tell Ben and Jo that they need to come to the police station ASAP to give statements on the murder, and a nice woman who they met the day before offers to look after Hank and take him back to the hotel.  They accept her offer without hesitation, but when they arrive at the police station, Ben gets a phone call telling him that Hank has been kidnapped and that he better not say anything about the assassination plot.

Ben and Jo keep their mouths shut and head for London to get to the bottom of the assassination and to find their son.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is Hitchcock's only remake.  The first version was made in England in 1934, and was one of his biggest hits of the era.  There were a few things that Hitchcock wanted to do over, and the remake had been on his bucket list for some time.

What I think of the movie

• Before: hate it
• After: I'm confused!  I didn't hate this movie as much as I expected to, but I need to see the original again to firmly shore up my rating.  For now we'll call it a meh and downgrade it if needed.

What's not to love about this movie?  Just about everything.

Problem #1: Jimmy Stewart's character is a jerk.  He can't get over how weird everything is in Marrakesh, which makes it unbelievable that he would chose it for a vacation spot.  The restaurant scene is painful to watch: he climbs over his wife to get to his seat because he can't figure out how to walk to the other side of the table, and he can't handle how low the seat is to the ground even though every other man in the place seems to have figured it out.  He is told that he can't eat with his left hand because it's the cultural norm, but gosh dang oh gee he can't figure out how to eat the weird food with just one hand.  Stewart was a great actor, but every once in a while he phoned it in and rolled out the Jimmy Stewart Stereotype Greatest Hits, which gets old fast.

Problem #2: the relationship between Ben and Jo.  We're in the worst of what the 1950s has to offer.  He constantly talks down to her, and she has a couple of choice comments about giving up her career but otherwise looks up to him adoringly.  The howler is when he has to tell her that their son has been kidnapped.  How does he do it?  By giving her a sedative first!  He asks her to take the pills because she's so nervous about the events of the day, and she says "but six months ago you told me I was taking too many pills".

Right before their son gets kidnapped, Jo and Ben drop two unbelievable lines of dialog:

Her: "When are we going to have another baby?  You're the doctor, you have all the answers."

Him: "Yeah, but this is the first time I've ever heard the question"

WHAT????  I don't think the movie ever tells us how old Hank is, but the actor who played him was 11, so they've been parents for over a decade.  They never talked about family planning before now?

Women were definitely not having a moment in the 1950s so this isn't too surprising and there is plenty of worse stuff out there, so why am I getting my panties up in a bunch?  Because the mom was such a strong character in the original movie.  She was a professional marksman who was active in her career and used her skills to take care of business.  Now that you mention it, I don't remember if the dad's profession is ever mentioned.  My point is that this is a strong female character who was watered down.

My other beef is that the 1930's version had an excellent villain and the 1950s bad guys are bland.  I need to see the original to get my memory straight, but I don't think that character is in this version.

Other than that, the movie lacks suspense.  When they get to London Ben goes out on the town to chase down a lead, and he turns on a quiet street and hears the sound of footsteps behind them.  It's meant to be eerie but it misses the mark completely. The scene in the taxidermy shop is super weird, and I don't remember that from the original.  Ben and Jo seem pretty calm considering that their son has been kidnapped, though I also remember that being an issue in the original movie.

The movie starts to redeem itself with the assassination scene toward the end, but it's all things that (to the best of my memory) were done in the original movie.  Doris Day singing Que Sera Sera is lovely, but it's a few minutes out of this mess of a movie.

Thank you to the person who condensed the movie down to two minutes of her singing Que Sera Sera.

Is there a MacGuffin? Mr. Ambrose Chapel!  You'll have to watch the movie to find out what that's about.

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Yep, as we already discussed, it's a remake.

I see a two future forwards to Vertigo.  The first is that Jo rocks a gray suit for the last half of the movie, which is very similar to Madeline's gray suit.  There second is the scene where Ben escapes from the church by climbing up the bell tower rope, which is hysterical since a bell tower is a prominent set piece in Vertigo and Jimmy Stewart's character was afraid of heights and would not have been able to make it up the rope.

Louis's death is similar to a death in North by Northwest: he is stabbed in the back, and when Ben realizes what has happened, there is an almost identical dramatic music effect and Ben pulls the knife out of his back.  Roger does the same thing in NxNW, but with a very different outcome.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• James Stewart.  This was movie 3 of 4 that he made with Hitchcock.  All of his other Hitchcock performances were unique, but this character stinks and he is reduced to using his most annoying Jimmy Stewart trademarks.
• Doris Day!  She makes the most of a dopey character and really sells Que Sera Sera.
• Bernard Herrmann!  He did the music, and he has a cameo as the symphony director.  Overall the music score feels weaker than his other Hitchcock offerings.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes, and I think they might like it better than adults.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Meh, if you blink you'll miss it.  Right before the stabbing he shows up in the crowd.

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

General plot summary and trivia

Early on a fall morning in a small Vermont town, a little boy finds a dead body and runs away to tell his mother.  While he's getting her, a handful of other people find the body, and they learn from paperwork in his pockets that his name is Harry.

For a variety of reasons, everyone involved thinks that they are responsible for Harry's death.  In the process of sorting things out, friendships are formed and love blooms.  But what are they going to do with Harry?

What I think of the movie

• Before: meh
• After: meh

Good things to say: the Vermont autumn setting is gorgeous.  The actors are terrific and the characters are memorable.  The music is fun.

Bad things to say: Harry just doesn't have a lot of meat on his bones.  There isn't much of a story here.  It's funny to a point, but when you bury a body three times you've gone too far.  I've often heard Mr. and Mrs. Smith described as Hitchcock's only comedy, and now I'm wondering if that was a dig at this movie, which is pretty largely a comedy.

Is there a MacGuffin? Harry is the MacGuffin.

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  No

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  No.  We're in entirely new territory.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• John Forsythe, who we last saw in Topaz.
• Shirley MacLane in her first movie ever!
• Edmund Gwenn is better known to you as Santa in Miracle on 34th Street, and he was a frequent Hitchcock flier.
• It was Bernard Herrmann's first score for a Hitchcock movie.  Sadly, since it was his first Hitchcock this will be the last time that we'll be talking about him in our recaps.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Meh, if you blink you'll miss it.  He walks by when a car stops to look at Sam's paintings.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

General plot summary and trivia

John Robie was once a notorious jewel thief known as The Cat.  He was caught and arrested, but escaped when his prison was bombed in WWII and became a hero in the French Resistance.  As a result his sentence was commuted to parole.

Meanwhile it's summer on the French Rivera and folks are getting their jewelry stolen right and left, and the crimes are identical to Robie's moves.  The police are convinced and ready to throw him back in the slammer, so Robie's only hope is to prove his innocence by catching the thief for himself.  He forms an unlikely alliance with an insurance agent of the elite who wants the robberies to stop so that his employer can catch a break on the payouts.  The agent IDs potential victims from his client list so that Robie knows who to hang out with to hopefully catch the thief in the act.  The top name on the list is a rich American widow with a gorgeous adult daughter, which boosts the Eye Candy factor of the movie from High to Extreme.

More jewels are stolen and Robie gets to show off his Cat Skills by climbing on rooftops.  While he is trying to catch the thief the gorgeous rich daughter is trying to catch him.

What I think of the movie

• Before: meh
• After: meh

I can't stress enough that this movie is gorgeous to look at.  And it needs to be because there isn't much else going on.  We're in a world of First World Problems of Rich People in the 1950s.  Robie and Francie have nothing in common except for being gorgeous people, and it's hard to swallow her pursuit of him.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  Yes

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  Not really.

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  No

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were frequent Hitchcock fliers.  This was Kelly's last movie with him, and Grant's second to last.
• Jessie Royce Landis is back as a mother!  We last saw her as Grant's mother in North by Northwest, and this time she's his potential mother in law.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Yes, if they would enjoy watching a movie about Rich People Problems.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Love it!  Early in the movie Robie escapes from his house to avoid the police and catches a bus into town.  He ends up sitting next to Hitchcock.

Rear Window (1954)

General plot summary and trivia

Jeff is a photojournalist who lives for adventure but has been sidelined by an accident on one of his assignments that left him with a broken leg and a cast that goes up to his waist.  He has been confined to a wheelchair for the past six weeks and is one week away from being out of the cast.  His NYC apartment looks into a courtyard and another apartment building, and he's taken to watching his neighbors and is up to speed on the daily movements of everyone in the building.  The camera lets us see the view from the zoom lens on his camera and shows us what he's been seeing: a dancer who doesn't wear a lot of clothes, a single woman who hosts imaginary dinner dates and drinks herself into a stupor on the regular, a couple with a dog, a composer who is going through ups and downs with his music, and a salesman with an invalid wife.

For company Jeff gets daily visits from Stella, a nurse supplied by his insurance company, and nightly visits from Lisa, his Ultra Glamorous girlfriend.  Jeff and Lisa's relationship has hit a bump.  He wants to get out of the cast so that he can get back to his round the world dangerous journalism assignments, she has money and works in fashion, and wants to get married and have him settle down.  It's clear that they have incompatible goals, but they aren't ready to call of the relationship just yet.  Stella calls 'em like she sees 'em and tells Jeff that he should marry Lisa and also, hey the peeping on the neighbors has crossed the line and he should knock it off.

One night Jeff hears a scream from across the courtyard and observes the salesman leaving the apartment with a suitcase several times in the night.  The next day the bedroom blinds are drawn, but the salesman never goes into the bedroom where his wife is.  When the blinds go up, the wife is nowhere to be seen.  The more Jeff watches, the more unsettling things he sees: the salesman washes a butcher knife and a saw in the kitchen sink and scrubs the inside of the suitcase.  A large trunk shows up in the apartment and gets hauled away.

Jeff is convinced that the salesman has killed his wife, and asks a police detective friend of his to check things out.  The detective comes back with a non-sinister explanation for everything that Jeff has seen, and tells Jeff what Stella has been telling him since the start of the movie: that his neighbor peeping has gone too far.

From a technical perspective, Rear Window is working overtime.  Special photography techniques were developed for Jeff to be able to zoom into the neighbor's apartments.  The sound crew recorded noises from real apartments and developed the soundtrack from that.  Throughout the entire movie you are always seeing and hearing other people, and it's a fascinating mix of layers.  This was the last movie that Hitchcock made before starting to work with Bernard Herrmann, and the sound and music are handled brilliantly.

What I think of the movie

• Before: love it
• After: love it

I go back and forth over whether Rear Window or North by Northwest is "the best" Hitchcock movie, and I don't think I'll ever be able to settle the debate, so my recommendation is to drop everything and watch both movies ASAP.

The difference comes down to size.  Rear Window is an intimate movie set in a small apartment about a man who watches his neighbors in their small apartments.  NxNW is a big splashy blockbuster.  Rear Window is a reflective look inside, and NxNW is about climbing Mount Rushmore.  Rear Window is serious with moments of humor and humanity, and NxNW is just a fun movie.  If one of these appeals more than the other, you have you answer about which one to start with.

Let's take a peek:

Is there a MacGuffin? The thing that is buried in the salesman's flower bed that the dog tries to dig up.

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  It's an inverse wrong man theme.  When the police detective comes back to Jeff with a non-sinister explanation of everything the salesman has done, Jeff wrestles with the fact that he may have accused an innocent man.

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  I see similarities to The Lodger and Shadow of a Doubt where a character sees evidence that someone that they know is a killer, but their first instinct is to doubt what they are seeing and explain away the clues.  From a technical perspective, Hitchcock had been experimenting with movies that had limited sets for some time (Lifeboat, Rope, Dial M for Murder), and Rear Window is basically the test that he got an A+ on after all of his studying.  The entire movie takes place in Jeff's apartment or in places that we see from the rear window of Jeff's apartment.  

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• James Stewart in his second of four Hitchcock movies
• Grace Kelly in her second of three Hitchcock movies.  This movie is worth watching for her clothes alone.  She doesn't let a 1950's swirly skirt and high heels stop her from rolling up her sleeves and getting in on the action.
• Raymond Burr aka Perry Mason himself as the salesman!  It took a lot of makeup and padding to transform a man in his 30s who was in leading-man-adjacent shape into a middle aged stocky creepy neighbor.  I think there is something about the familiar face in an unfamiliar package that increases the suspense of the movie.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? YES!  Get on it!!!

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Like it.  He visits the composer's studio.

Dial M for Murder (1954)

General plot summary and trivia

We're in London, and Tony and Margot have been married for a few years.  He used to be a professional tennis player, but about a year ago he decided that he needed to make more money, so he gave up the sport and settled for a day job.  She has some family money.  Prior to him settling down, the marriage was rocky and she had an affair with Mark, an American mystery author.  When Tony started his job, she ended the affair to give the marriage a chance and now everything is hunky dory.  Well, except that once she lost her purse and while it was gone someone took a letter that Mark had written to her and blackmailed her for it.  Now Mark is back visiting London, and she tells him that the marriage is on track and that Tony knows nothing about the affair.

At this point we meet Tony, who seems to want to be best friends with Mark.  The three of them are supposed to go out to dinner, but Tony bails at the last minute and tells them to go out without him.  Once they leave, we learn that Tony is up to no good.  In fact, he is the biggest villain of all time!  Not only does he know about the affair, but he's the one who took Margot's purse and staged the blackmail over the letter.  He invites a creepy looking guy named Swann to the apartment and rolls out the next stage of his plan.  He wants to kill Margot, but he knows he will be the #1 suspect so he can't do the killing himself.  He asks Swann to kill Margot on a night when Tony is out of the house and will have an alibi.  Swann of course says no way, but Tony has the upper hand.  He knows about Swann's extensive criminal history, and he also knows that Swann needs money.  He makes Swann an offer that he cannot refuse: if Swann kills Margot then Tony will say nothing about the crimes and will pay him some money.  He tells Swann that it will be easy to get into their apartment because he will take Margot's key out of her purse and leave it for him under the carpet of the hall stairs.

On the night of the murder everything goes according to plan...until it doesn't.  But Tony knows that sometimes you have to let go of the murder that you planned for the murder that you were meant to have, and his plan to get rid of his wife takes on a new dimension.  Now it's up to Mark to use his skills as a mystery writer to figure out the "key" to the crime.

A fun fact about Dial M for Murder is that it was originally made in 3D, which is a bit of an odd choice for a movie where the primary source of action is English people drinking tea.  I got to see it in 3D at the NYC Film Forum sometime pre-COVID, and let me tell you that they really worked the angle of keys being hidden and unlocking doors.

What I think of the movie

• Before: meh
• After: like it

The biggest criticism of Dial M for Murder is that it was a stage play, and its origins are very obvious.  99% of the movie is the actors sitting in Tony and Margot's living room.  It's a little static.  Also we're really missing Bernard Herrmann because the music is lacking.

The story is a very simple "howdunit" - not a "whodunit" since we know who did it, but we have to figure out the how and what went wrong.  It's nothing earthshaking, but it's fun to see how the pieces fit together.  The cast is terrific, and Tony is such a Uber Villain that it's a pleasure to see him at work.  I enjoyed this watch much more than I was expecting to, so I had to upgrade my rating.

Is there a MacGuffin? No

Does anyone get handcuffed in the movie?  No

Is there a Wrong Man theme?  Yes!  Except it's a Wrong Woman theme.

Is it set in/filmed in the Bay Area?  No

Does a character have Mommy Issues?  No

Are there elements of the movie that are similar to other Hitchcock movies?  Yes!  There is something about Tony's plan to have Swann commit the murder that feels adjacent to Strangers on a Train.   We've also seen a key play a pivotal role in a story before in Notorious.  And hey, we have another Blonde in a Gray Suit, which we've seen in The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo.  In addition, this was movie #3 of 4 (Lifeboat, Rope, Dial M, and Rear Window) that uses a limited setting with the action taking place mostly in the apartment.

Actors of note, left handed actors, and actors that were frequent Hitchcock fliers: 

• Ray Milland as the villainous Tony.  It's his only Hitchcock movie, and I wish there had been more.
• Grace Kelly in her Hitchcock debut!
• Robert Cummings in his last Hitchcock movie.  More to come about him when we get to the early 40s and Saboteur.
• John Williams as the Chief Inspector.  He was the insurance agent in To Catch a Thief.

Is this movie OK to show to middle school aged kids? Content wise yes, boredom wise I'm not sure.

Rate the Hitchcock cameo! Chef's kiss!  He is in the photo taken at Tony and Swann's college reunion.

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There you have it, our current installment of five movies!  Let me know if you've seen these and what you think.

Here is what is next on the docket.  We're going to wrap up the 1950s and talk about one of the Greatest Hits and four lesser watched movies.

Rope (1948)

Under Capricorn (1949)

Stage Fright (1950)

Strangers on a Train (1951)

I Confess (1953)