In relation to the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Donald Spoto writes, "Man-2 is everywhere a richer film-not only in technical execution, but also in the complexity of its characters and themes and, most of all, in the depth and directness of its emotion....The great sequence at Albert Hall is a perfect summary of Hitchcock's method and one of the most astonishing episodes in film....A wordless twelve-minute, 124-shot sequence, it gives full scope to what Hitchcock called 'pure cinema'....The clash of 'cymbals'...is really a clash of symbols: a song becomes a scream-the cry of anguish, the cry to be saved, to be reborn; a concert becomes a struggle to decide in favor of life...a journey to exotic ports has become an inward journey. Finally, a man who has gloried in knowing so much is disabused of his self importance."