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Quick LinksThe Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) Was Based on Alfred Hitchcock’s Own 1934 FilmJimmy Stewart Worked On Four Films Total With Alfred HitchcockOne of Doris Day’s Biggest Hits Made Its Premiere in the Man Who Knew Too Much

Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is a film with an interesting history. The concept started off as a book of short stories by author G.K. Chesterton and morphed into a movie in 1934 directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock. It was a prime example of spy fiction before it was being churned out en masse. Most modern audiences will probably remember Hitchcock's later version starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. In an unconventional move, Hitchcock chose to revisit his own film 22 years after the release of the first.

The remake of The Man That Knew Too Much shares few similarities with its predecessor. Much in the same way,...

Kudos to Powerhouse Indicator for releasing this dramatic propaganda piece based on an actual German churchman imprisoned for refusing to kowtow to the Nazi authorities. It’s a primer on fascist power from early in the war, one of the first features by the Boulting Brothers. Pi’s extras package enlarges our interest ten-fold: the pastor’s objection to the Nazis was grossly misrepresented and the politics of his incarceration were very different. An added bonus are other wartime short subjects by Roy Boulting, from the Imperial War Museum.

Pastor Hall

Region Free Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 95 min. / Street Date June 27, 2022 / Available from Powerhouse / £15.99

Starring: Wilfrid Lawson, Nova Pilbeam, Seymour Hicks, Marius Goring, Brian Worth, Percy Walsh, Lina Barrie, Eliot Makeham, Hay Petrie, Bernard Miles.

Cinematography: Mutz Greenbaum

Art Director: James Carter

Film Editor: Roy Boulting

Original Music: Charles Brill, Mac Adams

Screen Story and Screenplay by Leslie Arliss,...

A review for a movie not on video disc. CineSavant bears down hard on a now-obscure UK thriller that proves a crossroads for several key themes of modern terror: Nazis, bacteriological warfare and paranoid conspiracies. ‘007’– associated writer Jack Whittingham scripted a tale that connects old-school espionage to visionary super-crimes against humanity, the thriller genre of ‘The Unthinkable.’ Who’s the threat? An innocuous little doctor with a horrendous secret background and a somewhat preposterous ability to go undetected as he kills to assume and protect a new identity. The techno-chiller was released in 1948 yet seems screamingly relevant now.

Counterblast

Blu-ray

Savant Revival Screening Review

1948 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98, 90 min. / The Devil’s Plot / Not On Home Video

Starring: Robert Beatty, Mervyn Johns, Nova Pilbeam, Margaretta Scott, Sybille Binder, Marie Lohr, Karel Stepanek, Alan Wheatley, Gladys Henson, John Salew, Anthony Eustrel, Peter Madden, Archie Duncan, Olive Sloane.

Cinematography: Moray Grant, James Wilson...

Stage and screen actor who appeared in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and Young and Innocent

Among the many might-have-beens in film history was the starring of Nova Pilbeam opposite Laurence Olivier in Rebecca (1940), Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. The producer, David O Selznick, desperately wanted Pilbeam, who has died aged 95, for the female lead of Mrs de Winter, and was willing to offer her a five-year contract.

Pilbeam, who while still a teenager had already had important roles in two of Hitchcock’s films, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent (1937), was also hoping she would land the prestigious part, particularly since she had recently lost out to Margaret Lockwood in his The Lady Vanishes (1938). However, Hitch, after auditioning hundreds of young women, opted instead for the 22-year-old Joan Fontaine, claiming that the 20-year-old Pilbeam was not mature enough.

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The Man Who Knew Too Much star Nova Pilbeam has died, aged 95.

Pilbeam recently passed away after living in seclusion in London for more than 50 years, according to The Independent.

The British actress rose to fame at a young age in The Man Who Knew Too Much and Young and Innocent, two of director Alfred Hitchcock's pre-Hollywood movies.

She was later considered for the lead role in Hitchcock's Hollywood blockbuster Rebecca, only for Joan Fontaine to win the part when Pilbeam bristled at a five-year contract.

Her first marriage to Hitchcock's assistant Pen Tennyson ended when he died in a 1941 plane crash. A second marriage to journalist Alexander Whyte lasted until his death in 1972.

Pilbeam made her last screen appearance in 1948's Devil's Plot, and retired from the stage in 1951.

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Oscar winners Olivia de Havilland and Luise Rainer among movie stars of the 1930s still alive With the passing of Deanna Durbin this past April, only a handful of movie stars of the 1930s remain on Planet Earth. Below is a (I believe) full list of surviving Hollywood "movie stars of the 1930s," in addition to a handful of secondary players, chiefly those who achieved stardom in the ensuing decade. Note: There’s only one male performer on the list — and curiously, four of the five child actresses listed below were born in April. (Please scroll down to check out the list of Oscar winners at the 75th Academy Awards, held on March 23, 2003, as seen in the picture above. Click on the photo to enlarge it. © A.M.P.A.S.) Two-time Oscar winner and London resident Luise Rainer (The Great Ziegfeld, The Good Earth, The Great Waltz), 103 last January...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Jan. 15, 2013

Price: DVD $29.99, Blu-ray $39.99

Studio: Criterion

Peter Lorre is a evil--who woulda thunk it?--in Alfred Hitchcock's 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much

The 1934 British mystery-thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much is the first of two versions of the film made by Alfred Hitchcock, the second being a 1956 Hollywood movie starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day.

In the 1934 film, an ordinary British couple (Leslie Banks and Edna Best) vacationing in Switzerland suddenly find themselves embroiled in a case of international intrigue when their daughter (Nova Pilbeam) is kidnapped by spies plotting a political assassination. The clock is on and danger grows as the seconds tick by…

A strong early thriller from the Master of Suspense, The Man Who Knew Too Much was the first film the director made after signing to the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Besides affirming Hitchcock’s brilliance, it gave...

Young & Innocent

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Starring Derrick De Marney, Nova Pilbeam, George Curzon

It is a matter of uncertain serendipity that my first film of the BFI’s Hitchcock season happened to be Young & Innocent, reputedly Hitch’s favourite of his British pictures, now widely considered as the first cohesion of style and substance that displays many of his subsequent iconic motifs and iconography - the incorrectly accused protagonist, the urgent romance, a dash of macabre humor, and of course the intangible plot driver or manipulative McGuffin. If you can parse Hitchcock’s long and exalted career into three core sections – the early silents as the art form’s grammar and genre definitions took shape, the British talkies where Hitch was on the vanguard on a new phase of cinema’s technological transition and the Hollywood era which from 1940 until his death in 1980 marks one of the longest, most...

Alfred Hitchcock's film The Man Who Knew Too Much has been remade already (by Hitchcock) and parodied and/or referenced many more times. (See Bill Murray's The Man Who Knew Too Little.) So why not one more? Last fall there was a report that Paramount was developing a kid-centered remake of the film, and now that seems to be moving forward. Much in the way that Disturbia took the Rear Window formula and oriented it for teen audiences, The Kid Who Knew Too Much would take the basic setup from Hitchcock's two films and set it up so that rather than having a couple investigating a scenario that leads to their child being kidnapped, we'd see a kid looking for his stolen parents. John and Jez Butterworth are writing the script, but there is no cast or director at this point. (How has this title never yet been used?...

Dame May Whitty, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave in The Lady Vanishes (top); Robert Donat in The 39 Steps (bottom) On Nov. 27-28, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present the last four films in its "Hitchcock: The British Thrillers" series. They are: The 39 Steps (1935), starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll; Number 17 (1932), featuring the now-forgotten John Stuart and Anne Grey; The Lady Vanishes (1938), starring Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Dame May Whitty, and a cast of first-rate supporting players, including future Oscar winner Paul Lukas; Young and Innocent (1937), with Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney. The 39 Steps is the film that turned Alfred Hitchcock into an internationally acclaimed filmmaker. The film goes from one situation [...]...