Man Who Knew Too Much, The (1956)

Although remakes are surprisingly less successful than they should be when the director remakes his own film, you'd think that there's a better-than-even chance of success. Not so in the case of Alfred Hitchcock's remake of his 1934 film of the same name about a couple on vacation who accidentally stumble on to an assassination plot and find that their daughter is kidnapped by the conspirators in order to prevent them to prevent them from blowing their wicjked plan.

The opening scene of this tedious effort, with Doris Day and James Stewart against a back-projected exterior summarises just about every reason why the film does not work - an ill-matched pair in the lead, glossy but tacky production values, lame dialogue - and that's just to start with. The climactic Albert Hall scene with its carefully composed visual montage is justifiably famous (that's Bernard Herrmann conducting) but the original wins hands down in every other respect.

 

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