The Man Who Knew Too Much

The sole instance of Hitchcock actually remaking one of his earlier movies, this replaces the British version's tight, economic plotting and quirky social observations with altogether glossier production values and a typically '50s examination of the family under melodramatic stress. Stewart and Day are the complacent couple whose son is kidnapped by spies, and who wend their way through a characteristically Hitchcockian series of suspense set pieces (including a virtuoso crescendo at the Albert Hall) in their attempts to recover him. Starting slowly amid colourful but rather superfluous travelogue-style Moroccan footage, the film improves no end as it progresses, with anxiety about the boy's safety steadily undermining the apparent happiness of a marriage founded on habit and compromise.