10 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Remakes

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) – The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Alfred Hitchcock often employed the same tropes and character types in his films: wrong man narratives, the blonde as victim and victimizer, iconic chase scenes, and more iconic music cues, camera tricks including long takes. He even remade a handful of his own films, starting with The Man Who Knew Too Much 1934/1956. Both versions use the same plot: a vacationing family abroad befriend a man who turns out to be a spy. He’s subsequently murdered, but not before he passes on important information about an assassination to the father of the family. But when the child is kidnapped by the assassins, the father has to conceal his knowledge from the police to protect his child.

While the second version starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day is probably the better known film – including a spectacular climax involving a pair of cymbals and Doris Day’s singing voice- the original expresses Hitchcock’s finest work in his British period, a smaller, tauter narrative with a truly creepy villain in Peter Lorre. I’d opt for watching both films back to back and making up your own mind.