The first of Alfred Hitchcock’s many espionage films, The Man Who Knew Too Much also marked the start of a fruitful six-movie collaboration with screenwriter Charles Bennett (whose play Blackmail was earlier adapted by the director). In an opening sequence set in the Swiss Alps, the Lawrences – Bob (Leslie Banks) and Jill (Edna Best) – develop a fast, playful friendship with fellow resort guest Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay), who’s then unexpectedly felled by an assassin’s bullet. Before expiring, Louis communicates a piece of vital information to Jill, and to keep the Lawrences quiet and compliant, the malefactors snatch their daughter (Nova Pilbeam, who only a few years later would play the ingénue love interest in Hitchcock’s Young and Innocent). When the action shifts to London, Bob pursues the kidnappers,a spy cell of unspecified national origin led by the ruthless but easily amused Abbott (Peter Lorre). Hitchcock delivers several of the memorable set pieces (including a taut sequence in the Royal Albert Hall) that would soon become his signature, and he mixes in a surprising amount of humor (Bob is especially antic for the parent of a kidnapped child). Lorre, having fled Germany after the Nazis’ ascension, made his English-language debut in The Man Who Knew Too Much, and his sly performance is all the more remarkable because he was not yet fluent and had to learn his part phonetically.