A master of cinematic suspense, British director Alfred Hitchcock traveled to Marrakech in 1955 to shoot the remake of his own film, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”.
The thriller directed and produced by Hitchcock told the story of a French family on vacation in Morocco. This cinematographic and musical work depicts the experience of a secret agent eliminated in the streets of Marrakech, during his mission to prevent the assassination of the British Prime Minister.
For this, Paramount Pictures had obtained the production license from Pasha Thami El Glaoui, who introduced the team to the city. According to Murray Pomerance's book, “Edouard de Segonzac, general manager of the Paris office of Paramount, the procedures were quick, thanks to the friendship between Segonzac's uncle and El Glaoui, who oversaw the facilitation of administrative procedures.
The medina being at the center of production; getting permission to shoot El Glaoui didn't mean everything was going to go as planned. In effect ; "while armed soldiers were on the roofs and overlooking the souk", in order to secure the filming, the crowd was particularly "hostile" and the directors were strongly recommended to "suspend filming and no longer show their cameras" , reminded Murray Pomerance again.
In Marrakech, during his scouting, Alfred Hitchcock chose several areas of the medina viewing the sequences of his film. According to the Cultural Trip platform, the director “inaugurated his opus with a scene of a bus entering Bab Doukkala, a historic monument in the city of Marrakech”. Then, he showed “the same bus passing through Bab El Khemis, a very lively flea market rich in bazaars”.
