Why Would Hitchcock Remake This?

First of all:
The first time, I just figured it was typo. But since the same mistake occurs three different times and is never listed correctly, I have to point it out.
It was 1956, not 1966. There were very significant differences between the mid-50s and the mid-60s.

Yes, the Soviets were the primary / obvious threats in the mid-50s Cold War era. However, that doesn't require moving the action out of Europe. Also, people weren't shy about using Nazis as villains after the war. However, they were more limited to relatively independent plots; they didn't have a nation's resources behind them like the Red Menace did.

So why the shift to Morocco?

I can only speculate, but ....

Instead of thinking of the two versions in terms of 1934 and 1956, try thinking in terms of British and American. For the British version, a continental resort town like St. Moritz is just an average, typical "holiday" for a fairly well to do family like the Lawrences, but it does get them into an international environment. For an American family in the 1950s, all of the equivalent "typical vacations" would still just be within the US. To get the international flavor, it needed to be something bigger (relative to the family vacation). Once you get to the bigger trip idea, why not make it as "foreign" and exotic at possible? By the 1950s, Hitch could get the budget to do much more exotic things than he could in 1934. The shift to a more exotic culture also has the benefit of putting the parents in a more off balance position and keep them more isolated from trusted aid once things start to go wrong.


As to the original question of "Why remake it?"
From what I've read / heard in commentary tracks / etc., I think that at the time Hitch was on the hook for one picture on a multi-picture contract that he wanted to be done with. So going back and redoing something that he had already thought through once probably looked like a bit of a shortcut to fulfill that obligation.

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THe 1934 version takes us on holiday in St. Moritz at the beginning. This is in the Swiss Alps and the local villiams look suspciously like Austrian Nazis. In the 1966 version they are vacationing in French Morocco.

Why the change? In my view the update was relocated from Nazi Europe to Africa because of the shift from Germany as an enemy to the USSR at the end of WWII. In 1934, England was mobilizing itself for a fight aginst Naziism. Overnight, weirdly, the German Nazis were our friends. They were working in our government. We were not supposed to be reminded of the unseemly events of WWII and the German people. I think the media was trying to get everyone to forget the Nazis in 1966, stop embarassing them and clean up their reputations, which actually turned out to be a serious historical mistake.

Leaving aside the typo of 1966 I think these are salient points and I agree that the change of focus of the villainy is the most legitimate reason for remaking the film. As early as 1945 the Western allies were keen to court the newly liberated Germany as their attention turned to the threat posed by Russia so by 1956 with the Korean war a recent memory Communism and its exponents were the new enemies.

A bird sings and the mountain's silence deepens.

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