The Men Who Knew Too Much: Reading Goethe’s “Erlkönig” in Light of Hitchcock

Summary

Abstract: There are a number of resonances between Goethe's ballad “Erlkönig” and Hitchcock's 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much. Most strikingly, the father figures in these works can both be understood as having “too much” knowledge. Drawing on the work of René Girard, this article accounts for such resonances by showing that both the film and the poem trace a set of relations between knowledge, ritual, and violence. While, in both works, the knowledge of these fathers prevents a ritual from taking shape, without the outlet of ritual, violent tensions only build. In the poem, this leads to the death of a child, whereas the film obviates a similar catastrophe by subtly allowing ritual to resurface.

Keywords: Goethe, Hitchcock, “Erlkönig,” ritual, sacrifice, knowledge, violence

Introduction

THOUGH IT IS WELL-KNOWN that the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock owes a great debt to German art and culture, it is by no means intuitive to see a relationship between this filmmaker and the poetry of Goethe. Understandably, studies of the “German Hitchcock” focus typically on Hitchcock's early work in Weimar Germany, or on the powerful influence that directors such as F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang had on his conception of cinema. That Hitchcock is an heir not only of the cinematic but also of the German literary tradition is sometimes noted, but attention is given primarily to the more uncanny or horrific manifestations of German Romanticism. Authors like E. T. A Hoffmann or The Brothers Grimm come across as more relevant than Goethe. I suggest that Goethe deserves a more salient place in the broader discussion of Hitchcock vis-à-vis the German-speaking world. And the particular case in point that I examine is a subtle network of correspondences between Hitchcock's 1934 (and 1956) The Man Who Knew Too Much and Goethe’s 1782 ballad “Erlkönig.”

By bringing “Erlkönig” into dialogue with the film, I neither claim direct influence nor imply that Hitchcock definitely read this poem. Admittedly, given the widespread renown of “Erlkönig,” it indeed seems quite likely that he would have indeed been familiar with it.