Movie. The Man who Knew too Much, 1934. (HIx: 2)
Hitchcock remade this play a couple decades later in the better-know version starring Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day.
Here, agent Louis Bernard (Pierre Fresnay) is shot while dancing with Bob Lawrence’s (Leslie Banks) wife (Edna Best) while the couple is vacationing in Switzerland; the dying man leaves a key and instructions to get a note hidden inside a brush in his hotel room. Lawrence fetches the note. The bad guys, who had been tailing Bernard, know this has happened, and kidnap Lawrence’s daughter (Nova Pilbeam) to enduce him not to reveal the contents of the message to the authorities. The message gives details of an assassination planned in England.
In other words, it is international cloak-and-dagger. The affiliation of the bad guys is unspecified; the good guys are (very) British. The bad guys are led by Peter Lorre, who does a reprise, mutatis mutandis, of his character in the movie M.
The crisis that the play explores is the dilemma faced by the frantic couple: stay quiet in hopes of saving their daughter, thus allowing the diplomat to be murdered; or help the authorities foil the assassination and probably lose their child. They are innocent bystanders: they had no affiliation with the plot on either side, simply having the misfortune (unknown to them) that their friend was a secret agent.
There is some interesting action — a fight using folding chairs reminiscent of a Western tavern fight, for example –, and some black comedy. A very British missus somehow got roped in but now wants to go home — her husband will be expecting supper — and she doesn’t “want to be mixed up in any nasty business.” The old British way is also indicated in that the cops don’t have guns. They have to send to the local gunsmith to get some rifles.
Unfortunately, the opening leadup to the killing of Louis is painful — hints of infidelity; the bratty child; sarcasm abounding. The restraint of the English husband may explain why he comes across a bit as without feelings, though I suspect this is mostly due to viewing it with American eyes.
Despite some stretches in the plotting, it is well done, and explores a good question.