A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Man Who Knew Too Much -- in Blu-ray (2 Viewers)

[benbess]

Just for fun, I ran a rough budget on this film, to put things in perspective.
The cost for all restoration and preservation in 4k by the best post house in the business, would run far less than 600k.
That number includes pristine restoration, with a final result looking as it did in 1956, inclusive of a 4k DCP, HD video master, restored audio, archived data files, and one more item.
A record of the data out to a new VistaVision 8-perf negative, as well as a Vista check print.
This is not a matter of millions of dollars.
RAH

A few points of comparison that came to me to put the possible less than c.$ 600k cost of a full restoration for Man Who Knew Too Much into perspective.
One hour long episode of the current TV show Hawaii 5-0 (really 45 minutes when you take out the commercials) probably costs at least $3 million. And even one episode of a half our comedy today costs a lot more than the restoration of this classic film.
The original budget of Man2 is said by imdb to be about $2.5 million, which really underestimates the cost because Hitchcock and Stewart took a nominal fee in exchange for a share of a profits in their film. In other words, making a movie like this today would cost much more than the $25 million or so that a quick adjustment for inflation would seem to indicate.
But in any case the costs of a restoration seem reasonable for a film of this quality.
This is a movie with priceless talents no longer working in the biz who happened to capture lighting in a bottle with this extraordinary film. A lot of planning, work, blood, sweat and tears went into it as well. The great production designer Henry Bumstead first worked with Hitchcock on this production, and said something like "never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be working for Hitchcock!" He also said something to the effect that everyone on a Hitchcock film knocked themselves out to do their absolute best work for someone who was revered even at the time in the business. Hitchcock's calm word for someone whose work was up to the level he expected was that he or she was a "professional." Once when Bumstead wanted Hitchcock to look at one of his sets he had poured work into, Hitchcock pretended to not be that interested and said something like: well, you're a professional and I'm sure it's professional work. I got this info for Bumstead's autobiography that I read a while ago.
Anyway, this is just a polite plea for Universal to go back to this key title and do an appropriate restoration sooner rather than later. There's a reason that this film serves as my little picture ID here, and that's because it is my favorite of all of Hitchcock's many wonderful films.

 

[Matt Hough]

Well said!

 

[Robert Harris]

A few points of comparison that came to me to put the possible less than c.$ 600k cost of a full restoration for Man Who Knew Too Much into perspective.
One hour long episode of the current TV show Hawaii 5-0 (really 45 minutes when you take out the commercials) probably costs at least $3 million. And even one episode of a half our comedy today costs a lot more than the restoration of this classic film.
The original budget of Man2 is said by imdb to be about $2.5 million, which really underestimates the cost because Hitchcock and Stewart took a nominal fee in exchange for a share of a profits in their film. In other words, making a movie like this today would cost much more than the $25 million or so that a quick adjustment for inflation would seem to indicate.
But in any case the costs of a restoration seem reasonable for a film of this quality.
This is a movie with priceless talents no longer working in the biz who happened to capture lighting in a bottle with this extraordinary film. A lot of planning, work, blood, sweat and tears went into it as well. The great production designer Henry Bumstead first worked with Hitchcock on this production, and said something like "never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be working for Hitchcock!" He also said something to the effect that everyone on a Hitchcock film knocked themselves out to do their absolute best work for someone who was revered even at the time in the business. Hitchcock's calm word for someone whose work was up to the level he expected was that he or she was a "professional." Once when Bumstead wanted Hitchcock to look at one of his sets he had poured work into, Hitchcock pretended to not be that interested and said something like: well, you're a professional and I'm sure it's professional work. I got this info for Bumstead's autobiography that I read a while ago.
Anyway, this is just a polite plea for Universal to go back to this key title and do an appropriate restoration sooner rather than later. There's a reason that this film serves as my little picture ID here, and that's because it is my favorite of all of Hitchcock's many wonderful films.

Beautifully said. Nothing need be added.
RAH

 

[JohnMor]

Originally Posted by benbess /t/324714/a-few-words-about-the-man-who-knew-too-much-in-blu-ray/210#post_4001509
A few points of comparison that came to me to put the possible less than c.$ 600k cost of a full restoration for Man Who Knew Too Much into perspective.
One hour long episode of the current TV show Hawaii 5-0 (really 45 minutes when you take out the commercials) probably costs at least $3 million. And even one episode of a half our comedy today costs a lot more than the restoration of this classic film.
The original budget of Man2 is said by imdb to be about $2.5 million, which really underestimates the cost because Hitchcock and Stewart took a nominal fee in exchange for a share of a profits in their film. In other words, making a movie like this today would cost much more than the $25 million or so that a quick adjustment for inflation would seem to indicate.
But in any case the costs of a restoration seem reasonable for a film of this quality.
This is a movie with priceless talents no longer working in the biz who happened to capture lighting in a bottle with this extraordinary film. A lot of planning, work, blood, sweat and tears went into it as well. The great production designer Henry Bumstead first worked with Hitchcock on this production, and said something like "never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be working for Hitchcock!" He also said something to the effect that everyone on a Hitchcock film knocked themselves out to do their absolute best work for someone who was revered even at the time in the business. Hitchcock's calm word for someone whose work was up to the level he expected was that he or she was a "professional." Once when Bumstead wanted Hitchcock to look at one of his sets he had poured work into, Hitchcock pretended to not be that interested and said something like: well, you're a professional and I'm sure it's professional work. I got this info for Bumstead's autobiography that I read a while ago.
Anyway, this is just a polite plea for Universal to go back to this key title and do an appropriate restoration sooner rather than later. There's a reason that this film serves as my little picture ID here, and that's because it is my favorite of all of Hitchcock's many wonderful films.

From your lips to the Gods of Universal's ears!

 

[Persianimmortal]

A few points of comparison that came to me to put the possible less than c.$ 600k cost of a full restoration for Man Who Knew Too Much into perspective.....

Frankly I'm disgusted with your attitude. There's really no comparison to make. $600k can buy several days of top quality cgi work for the next Transformers movie. Some old Hitchcock movie pales in comparison to a modern masterpiece like the Transformers series. Especially when that Hitchcock movie doesn't even have any jive talking robots in it. Please get your priorities straight.

 

[benbess]

Frankly I'm disgusted with your attitude. There's really no comparison to make. $600k can buy several days of top quality cgi work for the next Transformers movie. Some old Hitchcock movie pales in comparison to a modern masterpiece like the Transformers series. Especially when that Hitchcock movie doesn't even have any jive talking robots in it. Please get your priorities straight.

Funny!!! But unfortunately on the somewhat true side....

 

[JamesNelson]

I have no issues with mindless popcorn fare...as long as some of the spoils are rolled back into preserving and honoring the film hertiage that brought us here in the first place.

 

[benbess]

I have no issues with mindless popcorn fare...as long as some of the spoils are rolled back into preserving and honoring the film hertiage that brought us here in the first place.

Unfortunately, that's not really the way it seems to work most of the time. But there are exceptions! And may this film be one of them. And I think this title would make this money back in a couple of years, and maybe even right away.

 

[ShellOilJunior]

I purposely avoided this thread until I'd seen the blu. I viewed this blu-ray the other day and Mr.Harris' review is spot on.
For all the talk of budgets and funding restorations - to me it seems awfully silly that funding could possibly be an issue. Universal is owned by Comcast and General Electric. When was the last time GE paid corporate taxes?

 

[classicscaper]

Funding shouldn't be an issue, but with the way these corporations work, you never know. The NBCUniversal TV branch of Comcast clearly is not doing the best...
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-12/business/sns-rt-comcast-nbcl1e8md05l-20121112_1_cable-channels-source-home-entertainment

 

[Dick]

I am disappointed with this transfer like everyone else. I did, however, seem to notice a pattern: the really wildly-shifting colors (especially skin tones) seem to occur mostly during process shots, when there was rear projection involved. When such was not the case, colors were more (although not perfectly) stable. Am I wrong here? In any case, wouldn't this suggest a full restoration is needed, at considerable cost to Universal?
I'm still learning, so forgive my very possible ignorance.

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

I couldn't agree more. It's as perfectly a conceived and executed sequence as there is in the movies.

I'm really gonna have to go back and watch this again, because I remember the one time I watched it a couple of decades ago, I found myself largely concurring with the review in Leonard Maltin's book:
"Hitchcock's remake of his 1934 film is disappointing. Even famous Albert Hall assassination sequence rings flat in tale of American couple accidentally involved in international intrigue."
I also remember Que Sera Sera getting old pretty pronto as well. But I'd love to end up loving it after all these years; perhaps I'd think differently now. A pity that this new Blu-ray is apparently a seriously lousy one. Hopefully Universal will restore this properly at some point.

 

[Mikey1969]

The original works better as lean suspense film; the remake adds layers and details making the characters more believable and the film more successful overall.It fits very well into Hitchcock's 1950's output. Anyone who says that the Albert Hall sequence "rings flat" knows nothing about cinema.

 

[Rob_Ray]

The original works better as lean suspense film; the remake adds layers and details making the characters more believable and the film more successful overall.It fits very well into Hitchcock's 1950's output. Anyone who says that the Albert Hall sequence "rings flat" knows nothing about cinema.

I agree. The original is tighter and faster-paced, but the remake is richer with many more nuances that enable you to genuinely care about the characters. I never understood Maltin's remark about the Albert Hall sequence. And those complaining about how Doris shrieks "Que Sera Sera" at the top of her lungs haven't seen the movie. She's desperately trying to call out to her son, four flights up. It was one of the first Hitchcock films I saw as a kid and it remains one of my favorites.

 

[JohnMor]

I agree, the remake is richer and superior. I do love the original, but comparing the two, I'll watch the remake more often. And, my apologies to Leonard Maltin (or whoever on staff wrote that particular review), but I think the Albert Hall sequence is better in the remake than in the original. But, that's what makes horse races.

 

[Oblivion138]

I'm really gonna have to go back and watch this again, because I remember the one time I watched it a couple of decades ago, I found myself largely concurring with the review in Leonard Maltin's book:
"Hitchcock's remake of his 1934 film is disappointing. Even famous Albert Hall assassination sequence rings flat in tale of American couple accidentally involved in international intrigue."
I also remember Que Sera Sera getting old pretty pronto as well. But I'd love to end up loving it after all these years; perhaps I'd think differently now. A pity that this new Blu-ray is apparently a seriously lousy one. Hopefully Universal will restore this properly at some point.

I agree on the song, which gets old quickly. So does the child actor's constant yammering in the early part of the film. If that brat were mine, I think I'd let the baddies keep him.
Overall, I much prefer the original...though the remake certainly deserves better treatment than Universal has granted it.

 

[Robin9]

And those complaining about how Doris shrieks "Que Sera Sera" at the top of her lungs haven't seen the movie. She's desperately trying to call out to her son, four flights up.

Exactly. I don't see how anyone can watch the film and not understand that.

 

[Richard--W]

... And those complaining about how Doris shrieks "Que Sera Sera" at the top of her lungs haven't seen the movie. She's desperately trying to call out to her son, four flights up.

Exactly. I don't see how anyone can watch the film and not understand that.

I can understand it. How they cannot understand why Doris Day is shouting the lyrics, I mean.
More often I am meeting people who are unable to process what they are seeing and what is being said, as if their range of perception is closing in on them, or as if their mental faculties stopped growing before the onset of adolescence. They comprehend what they see and hear up to a point, but they're not even reaching for the rest of it. The more information that becomes available, the less curious people seem to be.

 

[Cineman]

I agree. The original is tighter and faster-paced, but the remake is richer with many more nuances that enable you to genuinely care about the characters. I never understood Maltin's remark about the Albert Hall sequence. And those complaining about how Doris shrieks "Que Sera Sera" at the top of her lungs haven't seen the movie. She's desperately trying to call out to her son, four flights up. It was one of the first Hitchcock films I saw as a kid and it remains one of my favorites.

It's also interesting how many people think Que Sera Sera is sung too often in the movie. In fact, we only hear a small portion of it when Doris sings it to her son in the hotel room, establishing that it is "their song". But that is a very small portion as it is almost immediately interrupted when the hit man knocks on their door. Then, as you say, she sings it only one more time in the movie, at the Embassy in order to call out her son who she can only surmise is somewhere in the building. And we don't actually hear that one all the way through either since Hitchcock cuts away from it for a scene upstairs between her son and his kidnapper, when we can only vaguely hear it in the background. I've read comments in reviews that Day sings the song so much you'd think she sings it as often and with as many choruses as Annie sings Tomorrow in the Broadway show, Annie. I wouldn't consider barely 1 1/2 times "too often" for a song that figures so prominently in the plot.
Perhaps most interesting of all is how many people who see the movie think they are supposed to be as annoyed by her "too loud" singing of it at the Embassy as the dignitaries and their wives appear to be annoyed by it, as though Hitchcock hadn't really intended for us to notice their sidelong glances of discomfort to one another prompted by Doris' faux pas and that we had somehow caught a couple of unintended blooper shots of extras reacting with embarrassment to an actress/singer overly enamored by the sound of her own voice or something. Weird.
Weirder still is that by that point in the movie it should have been abundantly clear that Doris' faux pas of singing "too loud" for her audience was the umpteenth in a series of remarkable cultural faux pas committed by the main characters. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH ('56) is a compendium of cultural faux pas, to the point where you could say that is practically what the whole movie is about; the boy pulling off the woman's veil, Louis Bernard asking too many nosy questions, people rudely staring at the Mackennas and eves dropping onto other people's conversations, Bernard invites the Mackennas to dinner, bails on them with virtually no explanation and then shows up with "a date" at the same restaurant, Stewart's problem with sitting on the cushions at the restaurant and eating the chicken with both hands, the Mackennas leave their hotel visitors for other business time after time, they both sing too loud and the wrong words at the chapel, someone screams out loud at a concert, and on and on.
Even the jokey conversation between Stewart and Day about which patients' ailments "paid for" this and that in their vacation is an example of a culturally improper interlude. Is it really proper for doctors and doctor's wives to laugh off and calculate the profits from so-and-so's tonsillectomy? It is part of the brilliance of the movie that so much of it hinges on one cultural faux pas after another during a post-WWII era, the 1950s, when the subject of the "ugly American traveler" was beginning to creep into the national and international conversation.
So it is strange that so many misread the embarrassed reaction to Doris Day's "too loud" singing at the end of the movie as though she, the actress, didn't realize or understand how loud her own voice was.

 

[JoshZ]

It's also interesting how many people think Que Sera Sera is sung too often in the movie. In fact, we only hear a small portion of it when Doris sings it to her son in the hotel room, establishing that it is "their song". But that is a very small portion as it is almost immediately interrupted when the hit man knocks on their door. Then, as you say, she sings it only one more time in the movie, at the Embassy in order to call out her son who she can only surmise is somewhere in the building. And we don't actually hear that one all the way through either since Hitchcock cuts away from it for a scene upstairs between her son and his kidnapper, when we can only vaguely hear it in the background. I've read comments in reviews that Day sings the song so much you'd think she sings it as often and with as many choruses as Annie sings Tomorrow in the Broadway show, Annie. I wouldn't consider barely 1 1/2 times "too often" for a song that figures so prominently in the plot.

That is funny. I haven't watched this movie in ages, but in my memory of it, Day sings that song in its entirety no less than 875 times.
I absolutely could not stand it, and have had little desire to revisit the movie since. That you say it's really only sung 1 1/2 times is astounding to me. In my head, when I think of the movie, the song plays in a constant loop, over and over again, scene after scene after scene. She just will not stop singing it.
What is it about the movie and/or the song that triggers such a false impression of repetitiveness?