I'm not sure why I didn't have a more enthusiastic reaction to The Man Who Knew Too Much. Hitchcock is the director that got me interested in classic cinema, and Rear Window, Notorious, Psycho, The Birds, Rebecca, and The Lady Vanishes are all among my favorite movies. It's a globe-trotting adventure with all the tension, intrigue, assassinations, conspiracies, and suspense you could want, but there's something about it that just didn't really catch my interest until the last 30 minutes, or so. The ending is great, but the rest of the movie was just missing something, in my opinion. 

The problem certainly wasn't with the two lead actors. James Stewart gave another great performance under Hitchcock's eye (he was my favorite Hitchcock leading man), and Doris Day was charmingly determined and convincing as a confused wife  and mother, desperately searching for her son. 

The Man Who Knew Too Much certainly isn't a bad movie (is there such a thing as a bad Hitchcock movie?), and I expect that other people might have a more favorable response to it than I did. I suspect this is just one of those times when a good film just doesn't completely "click", with me, for whatever reason. I recommend it to anyone who is interested, though.

..to me The Man Who Knew Too Much is nothing more than Hitchcock's often repeated theme of mistaken identity or guilt by association. The bad guys see Stewart with the government agent and they just assume he (Stewart) has some relationship with him. And they don't know if in his dying moment the agent passed any information on to Stewart. He did say a few words, but Stewart has no idea what its all about.

It could have ended right there but when the bad guys kidnap Stewart's child, he has no choice but to get involved and solve the mystery. And he's caught between working with the bad guys or the cops. Sounds like North By Northwest, Saboteur, I Confess (a definitely underappreciated Hitchcock film), and Strangers On A Train. Ordinary man in extraordinary situation.

Hitchcock returns to familiar collaborator Jimmy Stewart, who never disappoints, especially when working with Hitch. And Hitchcock needs Stewart's acting talents, because this remake of his 1934 film may be more polished, but it also seems more dragged out than the original.

Hitchcock sticks his neck out a bit by casting Doris Day as Stewart's wife, but the two of them share a believable rapport as husband and wife, and she displays a more impressive range than in some of the fluffy romantic comedies with which she is more generally associated.