Here at the Daily Dot, we swap GIF images with each other every morning. Now we’re looping you in. In the Morning GIF, we feature a popular—or just plain cool—GIF we found on Reddit, Canvas, or elsewhere on the Internet.
Ah, the good old days. When men were men, women were women, and cinema was classic. Or was it? Just when you’re ready to write off contemporary film-making as the least subtle in the history of celluloid, you watch a great director’s breakthrough movie from 1934, and you realize, “Holy hell, that really sucked.”
Most people have heard of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, but they’re thinking of the 1956 version with Doris Day that’s set in Morocco, as opposed to the 1934 version set in Switzerland with Edna Best. The former is reportedly the greater film; the latter is the subject of today’s Morning GIF.
Back then, movies were what you watched if you weren’t classy enough to go to the theatuh, and they were often pitched a little low. Filmmakers often relied on over-emphasis that to modern eyes seems comical—indeed, see this particular GIF from a critical moment in the film. Someone has been shot! Where did the shot come from? The whirling dancers in the hotel ballroom? One of the lurking lounge lizards? Or is it perhaps possible that it came from outside?
This GIF, posted to the Professional Cat Sitter Tumblr, has 1,232 notes of corroboration. Now sit back and see if you can figure out who did it, as the full-length version is on YouTube.