Plots(1)
In an empty London house, a hobo named Ben (Leon M. Lion) looks for shelter—but instead finds a corpse. When a detective (John Stuart) shows up, he questions Ben, but is interrupted when a girl (Ann Con) falls through the roof. Her father has vanished, and she’s received an inscrutable telegram that mentions both the house and a missing necklace. Soon more suspicious characters turn up, all looking for the necklace, and none of them who they claim to be. (Kino Lorber)
(more)Reviews (2)
This Hitchcock film is hugely damaged by its Cimrman (or perhaps Monty Python) excessiveness, which tries to surprise with new twists and turns, but at best makes it laughable, at worst downright ridiculous. If it weren't for all the "shocking" revelations and the almost constant barrage of unnecessary dialogue, Number Seventeen could have been even better.
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I randomly picked Number Seventeen from a bunch of old British crime films, so I was pretty surprised to see Hitchcock’s name pop up in the opening credits. After the first ten minutes, I couldn’t tell if I was watching a movie or attending a symphony concert with moving pictures in the background. I get it, this film is more like the great-great-grandfather of cinema, but even then, I just couldn’t get into it. If this had been my first Hitchcock experience, I’m not sure I’d be rushing to watch more of his work. The sound effects barely cut through the often overwhelming score, the setting didn’t do much for me (neither the staircase nor the train), and things only got worse with weirdly staged fistfights and even stranger gunplay. By the time the cliché ending rolled around, the whole thing was just kind of a mess. I tossed it a single star, mostly for the experience of seeing something all the way from 1932. / Lesson learned: “We’re all Barton here.”
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