Universal PicturesOh, good, another pointless remake that puts flashy technology and big-budget spectacle ahead of moviemaking fundamentals, and makes it all much longer than it should be to boot. Admittedly, critics and audiences generally seem to like it, but why does this even exist when Hollywood should be pursuing original ideas instead? Are even our greatest creators stuck in a rut?We are, of course, referring to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, which hit theaters 70 years ago today in glorious VistaVision. A remake of the 1934 film of the same name, the original was directed by… Alfred Hitchcock, who felt that nearly a quarter-century of experience and new technology would allow him to improve on his effort. Black-and-white became color, 75 minutes became 120, and Leslie Banks, Edna Best, and Peter Lorre were replaced by Jimmy Stewart, Doris Day, and Bernard Miles.Both films follow a vacationing family who accidentally get sucked into a spot of international intrigue when they learn that a major political figure is about to be assassinated, and their child is kidnapped to keep them quiet. Unable to go to the authorities, the desperate parents must unravel the conspiracy themselves to get their loved one back.While some story beats are almost identical, Hitchcock is clearly reveling in the benefits of hi-res, widescreen VistaVision. Dr. and Mrs. McKenna’s Moroccan vacation is far grander than the Swiss opening of the original, and while both films set their assassination attempts at the Royal Albert Hall, it’s the sweeping scope of the remake’s that feels like a template for future high-culture showdowns in movies like Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.The extended runtime is used to expand our protagonists’ rocky marriage, while a strange, suspenseful sequence where Stewart pursues a potential lead at a taxidermist’s workshop leaves you wondering whether he’s on the verge of unraveling a grand conspiracy or is simply cracking up. And while the original ends with a shootout where our heroes largely vanish from the narrative, Stewart and Day must concoct their own rescue plan on the fly. It just feels like a more human film; Stewart is an anxious and sloppy savior, while Leslie Banks is so phlegmatic that his child’s kidnapping seems a mere inconvenience.Meant to help win back moviegoers after the advent of television, VistaVision offered a sweeping scale. | Universal PicturesHitchcock’s original film is also a delight, and one worth watching for its inexplicable chair fight alone, but its plotting is so loose that it feels more like a collection of scenes than a story. Some of 1956’s more nostalgic critics said the remake lacked the original’s agility and pace, and The New Yorker even implied that Hitchcock, who’d yet to make Vertigo and Psycho, was past his prime. But while not without its own flaws, The Man Who Knew Too Much radiates two decades’ worth of innovation in storytelling and cinematic technique, making it feel like an early modern thriller rather than a historical curiosity.The experiment feels like the inverse of Gus van Sant’s infamous attempt to remake Psycho nearly shot for shot, which produced a lifeless clone of the source material. But with the right steward, the same handful of plot points can be made to look and feel radically different. When Lorre and Miles teach their respective assassins when to pull the trigger, the dialogue is almost identical and yet the emotions they convey feel different. It’s easy to imagine that Hitchcock could have remade the film every decade and come up with a different result each time.We’re not exactly breaking bold new ground by pointing out that this Hitchcock fellow generally seemed to know what he was doing, but The Man Who Knew Too Much raises the intriguing question of whether any modern directors could pull off the same trick. We’re already awash in bloated live-action remakes and legacy sequels that rehash old plots. Why not let Christopher Nolan take a second, big-budget crack at his 1998 indie debut Following, or see what Stephen Spielberg could do with Duel if he didn’t have to worry about making it pop on the television sets of 1971?Jimmy Stewart learns to never engage the chatty guy on the bus. | Universal PicturesThose are unlikely scenarios, maybe even silly ones. But if we’re going to keep remaking movies — and we are — we might as well get something out of the experience beyond passable box-office results for bean counters. As soulless as Disney’s live-action adaptations have been, technological advances really do tend to benefit filmmaking. The 1925 adaptation of The Wizard of Oz is fascinating, but who claims that the silent, black-and-white affair is superior to Judy Garland and the miracle of Technicolor? The Man Who Knew Too Much holds up as a thriller, but it’s also a chance to see decades of personal and industrial advancements unfold in just two hours.Strangely enough, VistaVision, the format The Man Who Knew Too Much is so proudly presented in, is making a comeback after largely falling into obsolescence by the 1960s; The Brutalist was shot with it, as was Wuthering Heights, One Battle After Another, and upcoming films like The Magician’s Nephew and Digger. While some contemporary critics dismissed Hitchcock’s use of it as a gaudy distraction from the original film’s more sincere qualities, its time has come again. Maybe the time to let directors go wild with their own stories should return, too.The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is on Prime Video. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) is on the Internet Archive.