Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

What I love about Hitchcock's second version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" is the sly inversion of the message.  On the surface, Doris Day's wife and Jimmy Stewart's husband are the perfect married couple, and yes, they are, for that time.  She's given up a hugely successful career as a world entertainer to be stuck in Indianapolis with her physician husband, and raise their son.  He's oblivious to the fact that she has given up so much because he doesn't want to move to New York, where she could flourish again.  He can't control her if she's in her world.  But underneath, it's she that has the smarts to distrust the Frenchman they meet in Marrakesh, and she who figures out where their kidnapped boy is.  The perfect scene for me is his withholding information from her until he forces her to take two sedatives.  You can see that she would be deeply upset, naturally, but it's he who can't bear to let his emotions out of the cage.  Day's acting in this scene is amazing, and you are gripped by the situation.  But he drugs her.  That way he can keep control of a situation he thinks he, as a man, is better equipped to handle.  Later, when he searches for a name he thinks is a person, and is mistaken, it's she who realizes it must be a building and finds the kidnappers herself.  It's she who screams and saves the Prime Minister, as Stewart is still running around searching.  Ironically, in an entertainment on the screen, it's that kind of career that is indispensable, not an ordinary GP.  Moreover, because Stewart is almost always neurotic on screen, and Day so authentic seeming, we come to see her as the hero.  And it's her singing that finds their son due the way she has trained him to sing and know her songs and voice.  Let's here it for entertainment!