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“The Future’s Not Ours to See”: How Children and Young Adults Reflect the Anxiety of Lost Innocence in Alfred Hitchcock’s American Movies

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Abstract

In The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the ambassador, while plotting to kill the prime minister, orders the kidnapped American child Hank McKenna killed, telling his would-be gunman, Edward Drayton: “Don’t you realize that Americans dislike having their children stolen?” Earlier in the movie, Jo McKenna entertains her son and husband by singing “Que Sera Sera,” and its playfulness becomes darkly ironic when she sings “the future’s not ours to see” on the eve of her son’s kidnapping.

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Debbie Olson

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© 2014 Debbie Olson

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McEntee, J.T. (2014). “The Future’s Not Ours to See”: How Children and Young Adults Reflect the Anxiety of Lost Innocence in Alfred Hitchcock’s American Movies. In: Olson, D. (eds) Children in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137472816_3

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