Don't you realize that Americans dislike having their children stolen?

Sep 24, 2008 21:42



I expect more people have seen Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much than his 1934 original, but that's hardly surprising considering the position he was in when the later film was released. It was Hitchcock's fourth and final collaboration with screenwriter John Michael Hayes (they had a falling out over the writing credit) and his third with star James Stewart, playing an Indianapolis doctor on vacation with wife Doris Day in Marrakesh when they get caught up in a deadly assassination plot. They have to keep quiet about it when their son is kidnapped, but that doesn't stop them from trying to find him themselves -- and possibly preventing the assassination while they're at it.

As in the earlier film, the assassination attempt takes place at the Royal Albert Hall in London, with composer Bernard Herrmann standing in as the conductor. Instead of composing a new piece for the sequence, though, Herrmann chose to reuse the one that had made the original so memorable. The way it leads up to a climactic crash of cymbals, you really couldn't ask for a more perfect soundtrack to suspense -- and Hitchcock milks it for all it's worth. Of course, he also manages to do the same for "Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Que Sera, Sera)," which goes to show just how good he was at that sort of thing.

remake, alfred hitchcock

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