NUMBER SEVENTEEN

“Number Seventeen” is an oft neglected film in Alfred Hitchcock’s extensive oeuvre to the point that it is relatively unknown and seen.  Even the Master himself had no interest in making the picture.  The story goes that Hitchcock had his heart on making a comedy named “London Wall”, but the producers of the film decided to punish him for the failure of his previous film “Rich and Strange” that they took him off of that project and assigned him to work on “Number Seventeen” instead.  None too impressed by these events, Hitchcock didn’t take the job seriously and thus rushed through its making.  While “Number Seventeen” will never be confused for one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces, fans of the director will find a lot to like within this 1932 feature, making it at least worthwhile to check out.

The plot of “Number Seventeen” is a ridiculous and convoluted mess, and at times it is very hard to understand exactly what is going on, but the film initially takes place at a house ( number 17 of the street it is located) where an unknown man enters and almost immediately comes across another man who appears to be deceased.  However they are not the only people in the house, as there is also a bum named Ben lurking around the place and who initially becomes the prime suspect in the man’s murder.  As the story progresses, a diamond necklace is introduced along with a number of different and shady characters who all find themselves at the titular place, all with the intent of finding the necklace or boarding a train to….well, I’m not sure where, this is where I got confused.  Amazingly the train pasts underneath the house, so it makes it a great place to illegally board from.  To make the film even more exciting is the fact that no-one is who they initially seem, with identities often being confused and a famous policeman has even infiltrating the group undetected.

While the film is at times hard to understand, it is always enjoyable.  The film moves at a break-knot speed for its very short running time (63 minutes), and it is maybe this speed that makes it so easy to forgive (or not even realize) just how little sense the film makes.  Personally I had no idea what the whole idea of the train had to do with anything, but as long as I understood that getting to the train was important, that was all I needed to enjoy the film.  Initially I thought the finding of the diamond necklace was the most important thing, but then getting on the train seemed equally important too, but it doesn’t matter, just go with it and you will enjoy “Number Seventeen”.  Keeping track of just who everyone is in the film is equally as hard, as people hide their identities throughout, changing sides whenever they see fit too, and two (seemingly important) characters enter a room at one stage and are never seen again.  What also doesn’t help is the fact that two of the actors look almost identical to one another, thus causing even more confusion.  The one constant is the character of Ben, the drunkard of the film and also its comic relief.  There is no doubt he is who he says he is and he actually ends up being quite a funny character too.

So while the film is narratively a bit of a mess, what makes “Number Seventeen” so worthwhile is Hitchcock’s handling of the material.  As he didn’t take the making of the film very seriously, Hitchcock decided to experiment and play with the visuals of the film and a lot of what we see and know from classic Hitchcock films, can be seen in their infancy here.  Hitchcock experiments with the use of shadows extensively in “Number Seventeen” especially early on in the film.  None too surprisingly, Hitchcock uses the shadows to create an amazing feeling of suspense, even though these scenes usually end in some form of comedy.  The shadow work is very similar to the German Expressionist work seen in the classic silent films of that era (like “Nosferatu” and  “The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari”), creating an ominous atmosphere by dwarfing characters with huge menacing shadows.  The house at number 17 also has a large staircase in it, and anyone familiar with Hitchcock’s films knows he is a master at creating suspense through the use of a staircase, and he does so a number of times here and very successfully so.  The director’s fear of heights is well known and explored regularly in his films with characters often dangling from structures of great size (most famously Jimmy Stewart hanging from the gutter of a tall building in Hitchcock’s masterpiece “Vertigo”), and an early example is found here in “Number Seventeen” with two characters hanging for life on a broken beam of the aforementioned staircase.  Another highlight moment in the film is the amazing opening shot of the film that sees the main character’s hat blow off his head, the camera following it, until we get to the front door of the titular house, the man picks up his hat and enters the building going up the staircase until the body is discovered upstairs.  It is a tour de force shot and unlike most of what was being done in the infancy of “talking pictures” where the camera usually remained very static.

If “Number Seventeen” is famous for anything, it is for its climactic chase scene between a bus and a train at the end of the picture.  This scene is equally loved and loathed quite simply for the extensive use of models and miniatures to achieve the scene.  Personally I am in the “love” camp, and although it is always obvious that models are being used, I think Hitchcock has done an amazing job of making it all seem believable.  The scene is edited superbly and this helps in creating the illusion that what we are seeing is real and that there is a real sense of danger involved.  By alternating between shots of the models to the real bus and train, to the action happening within both vehicles (and thus with actors involved), Hitchcock successfully creates a realism where a lesser director would struggle.  Even the great French director, Jean-Pierre Melville was unable to pull off and hide the use of models (for a similar scene) in his final film “Un Flic”, made forty years after “Number Seventeen”.  

Overall, while you would never confuse “Number Seventeen” as a good Alfred Hitchcock film, there is actually a lot to like within it.  His visual experiments make the film very worthwhile as does its thrilling chase sequence at the end.  While the story and tone are all over the place, the film never becomes boring.  Performances are varied although I did get great enjoyment from Leon M. Lion’s drunken Ben who, while initially was very annoying, turned out to be very funny by the film’s end, even if he is a cockney cliché.  With a running time of only sixty three minutes, my advice is if you are a Hitchcock fan who has never seen “Number Seventeen”, sit back, relax and enjoy the film, as there is plenty to get out of it.

3 Stars.