100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #119: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring James Stewart and Doris Day.
In life and in great classic movies like The Man Who Knew Too Much, we discover how our lives are so deeply bound up with others. This film has a memorable place in the history of the Educational Guidance Institute’s Classic Film Study Project. It is featured in our study guide (available on Amazon) The Films of Jimmy Stewart: The Uncommon Common Man. Along with another Stewart favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life, this film was piloted in a high security detention home in Danville, Virginia in the very first year of our film project. This is a remarkable beginning for any project let alone one that features classic films, even many in black and white . It was made possible all those years ago by my friend, Jane Clardy. Jane had recently decided to give her professional expertise and her heart to educating young men incarcerated in the high security detention home in the city. As things turned out, our project in the regular classrooms in the middle schools of the Danville public schools was just “one more thing” but what happened with the dozen or so young men in those pilots simply reconfirms what readers of these Substack posts already know: The mysterious power of great films to move and elevate our hearts. The films Jane shared at the Danville Detention Home in that season were It’s a Wonderful Life, High Noon, Sounder and The Man Who Knew Too Much. I still have such a vivid memory of the report Jane Clardy gave us as we sat with her in the office of the Director of the Danville Detention Home. To sum it up Jane mainly reported on how, once the initial shock of the old fashioned feel of these vintage films wore off, the students evidenced their understanding of the deeper things in life these movies had shown them.
Looking back in 2025 on that first season of our project, this film of all four of the Hitchcock/Stewart parings, shines in its enduring significance not only aesthetically, but as a film story that invites us to travel on the road of what the late philosopher Alisdair Macintyre called “Classic Moral Inquiry.” In a mysterious way, that long ago season of classic film events at Danville Detention Home deeply confirms what we can find in our own life experience. Sharing together in community a great classic film, In Abraham Lincoln’s phrase, most of us can become more caring persons in the “better angels of our nature.”
Since those early days of our youth- serving project in Danville, I have been blessed to be a part of classic cinema conversations with high schoolers, college students and young adults in classrooms and community gatherings. In Father Richard Carr’s classic film classes conducted over five years at Holy Trinity in Gainesville, Virginia, Jimmy Stewart’s movies were favorites with our high schoolers. Most of the students were in the class for two- or three of the five-year period. Sitting in the class every week, I saw how the students loved delving deeply into Stewart’s characters. In discussion and presentation of their papers, students would analyze and compare, for example, Jeff Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Tom Stoddard in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence to Ben McKenna in this film.
To sum it up, it is good to think not only of the personal enjoyment that a great movie like this can give us who are movie buffs, but to consider how compelling these films can be – not to all but to many in this rising generation, as a learning experience in understanding human nature. In our project and in our study guides, we feature the great films that not only entertain but also dramatize the realities of life in a world that has a moral order. Whatever the chaos we see all around us today, the rising generation - if given the opportunity to view and discuss a great classic film – can become convinced, if only for a few hours, that we do live in a morally ordered world. I know from all of my experience with the project over the years, and especially now in this dark time of political polarization, these films serve to bridge deep division at the same time they teach the great and permanent things of life. And with Ben and Jo Mckenna, today’s youth can be reminded that each of us plays an essential part of the whole in what we might call The Business of Life; we are not just isolated autonomous selves involved in daily transactions.
What does The Man Who Knew Too Much have to tell us about this world we live in.? To explore this question, we can think about the four films Jimmy Stewart made with Hitchcock: Rope (1949) and Rear Window (1954) before this film and Vertigo (1958) which followed. Each of these films presents a view of human nature that is visible in the characters Jimmy Stewart plays. I propose that of all of these four films, The Man Who Knew Too Much does the best job of affirming that we do live in a world that has a moral order. Further, of the four, this film best shows its audience that in this moral order our greatest happiness is following the Aristotelian Road of virtuous moral choices. The Man Who Knew Too Much proclaims that as G. K. Chesterton reminds us, we are all in the same boat on the stormy sea of life and we owe each other a “terrible loyalty.” How does Hitchcock teach us this amazing lesson?
We can think of The Man Who Knew Too Much as a series of episodes, and in each episode, we are right there with Jimmy Stewart’s Ben McKenna and with Doris Day as his wife Jo. Stewart does such a good job of portraying a controlling man who is very stuck on himself. Ben McKenna is a man who is carrying a deep sense of personal entitlement. Doris Day’s Jo, as each scene progresses, models virtuous determination and prudence and gradually her husband learns how to be a partner instead of a 1950s version of “the man in charge.” Together they dramatize the parings we love to see, an ordinary man and woman who must, by forces beyond their control, undertake a life and death adventure. They must overcome great odds. I like to include in any series with Hitchcock, the very first of these pairings - Robert Donat and Madeleine Carrol in the first film Hitchcock ever made, The 39 Steps.
Exploring Civic Virtues, we see in The Man Who Knew Too Much with Educational Guidance Institute’s (EGI’s) Civic Virtue Continuum.
In addition to the four cardinal virtues of Courage, Prudence, Justice and Temperance, EGI’s Civic Virtue Continuum includes three very deeply Aristotelian/Thomistic virtues: Like-Mindedness, True Friendship and Care for the Common Good. With the civic virtue of Care for the Common Good we find also its excess of Entitlement and the deficit of Indifference. Jimmy Stewart’s Ben McKenna is confronted with this civic virtue all at once as he witnesses the death of the spy Louis Bernard and experiences a call to the defense of the common good when Louis whispers in his ear that very soon a stateman will be assassinated in London – Ben McKenna now is the man who knows “too much.” Ben has to develop his newfound care for the common good with the help of others who have the virtue of like-mindedness. In a moving scene, close to the end of the film, Ben witnesses as we do in the audience the elevating and lifesaving like mindedness of Mrs. Drayton played by the talented British actress Brnda de Banzie. Please check out our Civic Virtue Continuum (featured on our website in our Civic Engagement Curriculum available for free download).
Jimmy Stewart Focuses on the Famous “Twelve Minutes of Pure Cinema”.
In various public appearances at the end of his legendary career when the topic was his films with Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart would consistently focus on this film and the crucial scene at the concert in London’s Albert Hall - the legendary “Twelve Minutes of Pure Cinema”
This sequence shows Hitchcock’s genius as he weaves all of the threads of the story together and they are played out visually as we listen to the moving music of longtime Hitchcock collaborator, Bernard Herrmann. During this sequence we in the audience are participants in the drama right along with Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day as the Acting Persons” (In beloved Pope John Paul II’s phrase). With Alfred Hitchcock’s 12 minutes of pure cinema at Albert Hall we are reminded of what we already know in our hearts: We do live in a world with a moral order and as acting persons in this world, we are called to make moral choices for the good. Our natural moral instincts and the great philosophers of the classic tradition such as Aristotle, Cicero and Thomas Acquinas affirm that we do carry a human capacity to know, love and act for the good.
We can deduce from what Jimmy Stewart himself said and did not say in public, that of the four films he made with Hitchcock, this one is his favorite. We can sense this from viewing his tribute to Hitchcock at the American Film Institute as well as his special on his life’s work with his good friend and Tonight show host Johnny Carson.
What does courage look like? What does hope look like? Here we see in visual storytelling form transcendent goods that we can see, can know, and can love. What I strongly recommend is embarking on a Jimmy Stewart Film Festival with friends, family, students and folks in your community. Perhaps more than any other actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood, Jimmy Stewart in his many roles walks alongside of us as we gather together in the mode of classic moral inquiry. We can play a part in this way of together - a way of exploring the things of life that matter most.
Onalee McGraw is the Director of Educational Guidance Institute’s Classic Film Study Project, check EGI out at Educationalguidanceinstitute.com. Feel free to direct inquiries to Onalee McGraw at EGIatthemovies@gmail.com.
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