A British couple on holiday in Switzerland becomes involved in a sinister plot when they witness a murder and their daughter Betty is kidnapped. Back in London, they are too scared to involve the police, and try to track down the perpetrators themselves. The Man Who Knew Too Much was the film that triggered Hitchcock's reputation as the master of suspense. Acclaimed around the world, the film established a new high in the thriller genre. Although Hitchcock was given only a limited budget, he used his technical mastery of the medium to camouflage these limitations. He shot the gripping Albert Hall sequence in the Lime Grove studio, and used a painting by the academician Fortunino Matania to represent most of the Albert Hall audience. Hitchcock makes brilliant use of Peter Lorre in the role of the smiling villain. Shorter, tauter, more nightmarish in black-and-white than Hitchcock’s own 1955 Technicolor remake with Doris Day and James Stewart, the 1934 version provides its shocks on a need-to-know basis.