Hitchcock: An Analytic Movie Review

A number of re-releases of Hitchcock's films have recently been made available to the public allowing a younger generation of viewers to enjoy his work. These films have a remarkable psychological cogency. The Man Who Knew Too Much concerns a threat to a pre-pubertal boy in an American family. The boy's anxiety provokes a regression and one can trace back his fantasies through ever more primitive layers until a sort of psychological bedrock is reached, after which his anxiety is successfully ameliorated. While the manifest content of the film concerns a kidnapping, the latent meaning, I will argue, has to do with the preoedipal and oedipal conflicts that are so characteristic of pubescence. The interpretation of this film is very much consistent with modern notions of adolescence and I will rely heavily on the writings of A. Freud (1936, 1958) and particularly Peter Blos (1965, 1967). They argue that a comprehensive understanding of pubertal conflicts must take into account the child's need to resolve latent preoedipal attachments before he can take full advantage of the forward thrust provided by the upsurge in his drives. A frequent clinical situation, well illustrated in this film, is the tendency of preoedipal anxieties concerning the omnipotent phallic mother to make their appearance under flamboyant projective guises. Let us begin with a summary of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

This film begins in a concert hall. The camera closes in on the percussionist. When the music reaches the peak of a stormy crescendo, he crashes his cymbals.

Without transition we join a Dr. McKenna, his wife, and their son Hank, on holiday on a bus ride to Marrakech. Hank, who appears about age ten, becomes restless and walks toward the front of the bus. It suddenly bolts throwing the boy off balance. He returns to his parents followed by an enraged Arab who shouts at the boy and his parents in his native tongue. The exacerbated family is rescued by a gallant neighboring passenger, M. Berna