In The Man Who Knew Too Much, the second film of the same name directed by Alfred Hitchcock, American doctor Ben McKenna (James Stewart) has taken his family — wife Jo (Doris Day) and son Hank — to Morocco for a vacation, where they happen to make friends with a Frenchman named Louis and a nice English couple, the Draytons. But the next day, the two families run into Louis. Literally — Louis is fleeing the police, dressed in disguise, with a knife sticking out of his back. With his dying breath, he tells Ben that there will be an assassination in London and only he can stop it. Soon Ben and his family are embroiled in political intrigue that stretches across half the world and endangers everything they thought they knew.

Any time a filmmaker decides to remake their own movie, it feels significant. Regardless of the (stated or real) reasoning: George Sluizer (Spoorloos and The Vanishing) and Michael Haneke (Funny Games [1997] and Funny Games [2007]) both did it in an attempt to more or less localize a movie for American audiences — and make a little money; Yausjiro Ozu (A Story of Floating Weeds and Floating Weeds) and Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments [1923] and The Ten Commandments [1956]) both did it to update silent films for sound — and make a little money. But sometimes they just want another shot at material they think deserves better; Hitch famously didn’t allow the screenwriter for the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much to watch the original or read its script. He wanted a fresh take, and he got it. He once told François Truffaut that the first version “is the work of a talented amateur, and the second was made by a professional.” Hitchcock always was obsessed with doubles.

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This screening is held in the Historic Duncan Auditorium. This space utilizes open seating for this event, seat selection is not required.