I have watched both this earlier version and the 1954 remake four times each, and i always prefer the original version for three reasons:
(1) Edna Best plays a competent woman and heroic mother in the original and Dinah Shore plays "Que Sera Sera" interminably and is little more than a submissive wife in the remake.
(2) Peter Lorre is just too cool for words in this version, and although the remake can boast James Stewart, whom i admire greatly, Lorre is super-sensational. (They play different characters, of course; i am simply choosing between two stars. )
3) The climax is boring and predictable in the remake, and defers to the concept of "expert authorities," much like a "fighting G-men" or "valiant treasury agents" semi-documentary "true story" movie of the 1950s, but in the original, as in many of Hitchcock's British crime dramas (and even into the American "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Strangers on a Train") fairly ordinary people call upon reserves of strength and fearlessness, with only their desperation and native intelligence to sustain them.
I give this version 8/10 and the remake 6/10 -- but i always watch them together, back-to-back.
(1) Edna Best plays a competent woman and heroic mother in the original and Dinah Shore plays "Que Sera Sera" interminably and is little more than a submissive wife in the remake.
(2) Peter Lorre is just too cool for words in this version, and although the remake can boast James Stewart, whom i admire greatly, Lorre is super-sensational. (They play different characters, of course; i am simply choosing between two stars. )
3) The climax is boring and predictable in the remake, and defers to the concept of "expert authorities," much like a "fighting G-men" or "valiant treasury agents" semi-documentary "true story" movie of the 1950s, but in the original, as in many of Hitchcock's British crime dramas (and even into the American "Shadow of a Doubt" and "Strangers on a Train") fairly ordinary people call upon reserves of strength and fearlessness, with only their desperation and native intelligence to sustain them.
I give this version 8/10 and the remake 6/10 -- but i always watch them together, back-to-back.