As with the idea of a MacGuffin, the concept of “refrigerator logic” had been around for a long time in narrative (though obviously called something else before refrigerators, or iceboxes, had been invented, if there was a term for it at all), but it was Alfred Hitchcock who helped popularize it (though he referred to it as an “icebox scene”). The idea is, you’re watching a movie, you get caught up in it, then when you come home and open the refrigerator to get something, you stop and say, “Wait a minute – in THE FUGITIVE, where is Harrison Ford getting the money to do all of what he’s doing when he’s on the run, and how is it Tommy Lee Jones can be walking up one flight of stairs while Ford is going down another flight of stairs on the opposite side of the building, and yet Jones can make out who it is?” If you are truly caught up in the story, these kinds of things don’t matter; only if you aren’t will they occur to you while you’re watching/reading it. I say this partly because my first encounter with refrigerator logic came with Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man who Knew Too Much.
Before I get to that moment, a word about the story (the movie was written by John Michael Hayes, adapted from the 1934 version that was written by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis). Ben McKenna (James Stewart), a doctor, and his wife Jo (Doris Day), a former singer, are on vacation in what was then known as French Morocco (now just Morocco), along with their son Hank (Christopher Olsen). They’re on a bus ride when the bus swerves, and Hank, who has been walking down the aisle, accidentally pulls off a Muslim woman’s face veil when he’s trying to keep from falling. The woman’s husband starts to yell and Hank and Ben until Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin), a Frenchman onboard the bus, intervenes and calms the husband down. A grateful Ben starts chatting Louis up, and even invites him for drinks back at the hotel, but while he and Jo both find Louis charming, Jo is suspicious of Louis because he won’t answer direct questions about himself yet seems to ask them about everything. Jo’s suspicions seem to be confirmed when Louis breaks a dinner date without explanation but shows up at the same restaurant as her and Ben with a woman, and without explaining anything to them. Also at the restaurant, Ben and Jo meet Edward (Bernard Miles) and Lucy Drayton (Brenda de Banzie), a British couple who had been staring at them (though Lucy says it’s because she thought she recognized Jo from when she was a singer). The next day, the McKennas (with Hank in tow) and Draytons go the market when they notice a man being chased, and that man also gets stabbed. Turns out it’s Louis, and before he dies, he tells Ben about an assassination plot in London involving Ambrose Chapel. The police want to question Ben about what happened, and so he and Jo go to the station, while Edward comes along in case they need a translator (as it turns out, the police captain speaks English quite well), and Lucy takes Hank to the hotel. However, during Ben’s interrogation, he gets a call from a mysterious man who warns Ben if he repeats a word of what Louis Bernard told him to the police, Hank will be killed. The rest of the movie involves Ben and Jo going to London to try and find Ambrose Chapel (at first, they think it’s a person, but Jo realizes it’s a place) without getting the police involved so Hank doesn’t get killed.
Aside from the length of the movies (the 1934 original is only 75 minutes long, while the 1956 version runs two hours exactly), the fact the main couple in the original is British (played by Leslie Banks and Edna Best, and called Bob and Jill Lawrence), and the fact in the original, they have a daughter who’s kidnapped (named Betty, and played by Nova Pilbeam), the main difference between the two versions is in the first half, as well as the climax. The 1934 version starts out in Switzerland, where Jill is competing in a clay pigeon shooting contest, and the two already know Louis Bernard (though the movie never really explains how). Louis is also killed here, but in the original, he tells Bob where to find information about the planned assassination as well (which becomes the movie’s MacGuffin), and the villains (led by Peter Lorre) kidnap Betty to keep Bob from talking. Although both movies have a similar set piece taking place at a concert hall (more on that below), after that, the original has a shoot-out between the villains and the police at a temple. This shoot-out is one of the reasons why I think the original doesn’t work as well as the remake does, as I don’t think Hitchcock builds much suspense out of it. Also, while Banks, Best and Pilbeam are good as the family, the relationship they have with Louis Bernard here doesn’t make as much sense as it does in the remake. Of course, Peter Lorre does make a compelling villain (as the assassin in the remake, Reggie Nalder is good, though not as good as Lorre), but I think the remake is better in every way.
For one thing, Hitchcock and Hayes take time in developing the McKennas as a family. Right before he catches sight of Louis Bernard being chased in the market, for example, Ben and Jo have a laugh about the fact their vacation is being paid for by all of Ben’s patients. We also get to see Jo singing, as she sings “Que Sera, Sera” for Hank before he goes to bed, and the song becomes crucial later when she performs it at an embassy, so we’re not just being told about her abilities (Day didn’t think much of the song – written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston – at first, but it became her biggest hit). Hitchcock also ably mixes humor and suspense with the scenes in the Mckennas’ hotel room in London, where Ben and then Jo try to find out about Ambrose Chapel all while keeping Jo’s friends (played by Carolyn Jones and Alan Mowbray, among others) in the dark about what’s going on (leading to a good joke at the end). Also, Ben and Jo may represent the All-American couple here, but Hitchcock and Hayes aren’t afraid of making Ben uncomfortable – Hitchcock makes sport of Stewart’s height when he has to sit on the floor of a restaurant, as well as his clumsiness when he tries to eat according to Arab custom and fails – as well as unlikable (Ben may have good medical reasons for having Jo take a sedative before he tells her Hank’s been kidnapped, but Jo rightly calls him out for it). Finally, Stewart and Day work very well together. This is the one movie Stewart did with Hitchcock where he played a role more in line with his pre-WWII persona, and he does a good job with it. I must confess I’ve never been a big fan of Day (I’m not a fan of perky, and I think she’s too strenuous for the most part), but Hitchcock brings out some unexpected depth in her, especially in the scene where she finds out Hank’s been kidnapped, as well as when she realizes the truth about Ambrose Chapel. The rest of the cast is also good, with Miles being effective as someone who may seem like a nice person but isn’t, de Banzie as someone not comfortable with every aspect of her role in the intrigue, and Gelin is effectively mysterious.*
One major behind-the-scenes collaborator on this movie was composer Bernard Herrmann, in the second of seven movies they did together (The Trouble with Harry, Hitchcock’s black comedy from the previous year, was the first). Although his score may not be as famous as the ones he wrote for Vertigo, North by Northwest, or Psycho, it does help keep you in suspense throughout. However, there is one major piece of music in the movie (aside from “Que Sera, Sera) that Herrmann did not write, and that’s Arthur Benjamin’s “Storm Clouds”, a cantata being performed at the Royal Albert Hall near the end of the movie. “Storm Clouds” was also used in the original, when Jill, like Jo in the remake, follows the assassin to Royal Albert Hall, and Herrmann liked the piece so much that he decided to use it in the remake, though he expanded the orchestration of the piece and padded it out (Herrmann can also be seen conducting the orchestra and choir in a rare film appearance). Cinematographer Robert Burks (in the eighth of his ten collaborations with Hitchcock) and editor George Tomasini also make this work, knowing when to slow down (the conversation among the McKennas on the bus) and when the speed things up (the climax at the Royal Albert Hall, though Hitchcock also deserves credit for doing the scene without dialogue even though a speech was written for Stewart in the scene).
Nowadays, it seems Hitchcock afficionados rank this movie low compared to other movies he did with Stewart, as they think Rear Window and Vertigo are more ambitious thematically (and contain more perversity), and even Rope had technical ambitions this movie doesn’t. But I think this movie has narrative perversity, which brings me back to the refrigerator logic in the movie. If you look at the second paragraph, where I’ve written the plot description, you’ll see it – if the bus doesn’t swerve, and Hank doesn’t accidentally pull the veil off the Muslim woman’s face, Ben and Jo never meet Louis Bernard, and the entire plot goes out the window. Only Hitchcock could get away with hanging an entire movie on such a monumental coincidence. In the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut the original was the work of a talented amateur, while the remake was the work of a professional. Hitchcock apparently preferred the original version of The Man who Knew Too Much, but I prefer the version made by the professional.
*-Gelin also came up with a suggestion for the scene where Louis tells Ben about the assassination plot as he’s dying. It looks like Louis is wearing brownface to look Moroccan when he’s stabbed and when he approaches Ben. However, the makeup artists were unable to figure out how to get that makeup to slide off Ben’s fingers when he touches Louis’ face, so it was Gelin who suggested they put light-colored powder on Jimmy Stewart’s fingers so they would leave streaks on Gelin’s face.