![]() ![]() So does Hank’s captor, a woman, who is moved by the mother’s voice she tells Hank to whistle along, and so his father finds him. ![]() When the McKennas then discover that Hank is being held at that prime minister’s embassy (the prime minister’s own ambassador arranged the assassination attempt) the McKennas get themselves invited to a party there, where Jo McKenna performs the song she used to sing for Hank, ‘‘Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).’’ She appears to be singing for everyone, but really she is singing, loudly, for only one person - her child. Following various clues, the McKennas fly to London, hoping to find their son, and there, somewhat by chance, save the life of a foreign prime minister. ![]() (Even after their child is kidnapped, for example, Ben politely entertains guests.) While in a market one day, the McKennas witness a murder Ben hears the dying man’s last words, a warning about a political-assassination plot. Instead, they are normal in that they are devoted to norms and customs. The McKennas are normal not in the sense of being typical - they are well-off, and Jo is a once-famous, now-retired singer. It works like this: James Stewart and Doris Day play the outlandishly ‘‘normal’’ American couple, Ben and Jo McKenna, who are vacationing in Morocco with their young son, Hank. But I would also point out that the plot of the movie is held together by a song - a song that a mother sings to her child. This somewhat eccentric read on a classic is most likely attributable to the fact that I am a mother and have a baby almost constantly on my mind. Or at least that is how I currently see the film, even though there are basically no babies in it. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 motion picture ‘‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’’ dramatizes the geopolitical status of babies. ![]()
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