Number Seventeen - Alfred Hitchcock

A windy day, a hat blows down the sidewalk followed by a man - Forsythe. He picks it up, looks up and sees that he is in front of house #17, a nice three story house that looks to be for sale. After putting the hat on, he sees a light in the house, and it looks like it is rising up the floors of the deserted house. The man enters, there is some fantastic play of shadows and candlelight as he works his way up to the top floor. He knows that someone else is there, and they meet on the top floor, surprise each other and then realize that they are both standing over a dead body.

This is the opening to the fantastic Number Seventeen by Alfred Hitchcock. It was released in 1932 and I think it is a great film. Though based on the stage play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, the feel of the film is very haunted house, or ghost story with a lot of shadows and light - effects that are a bit tough to do on stage. The two men - Forsythe, played by John Stuart, and Ben, played by Leon M. Lion try to figure out what to do. They look around to see if they can find the cause of the death, or who he is when they hear sounds coming from the roof. With a crash, Nora, played by Anne Grey, literally drops in through the ceiling. She lands and when she comes to she tells the men that her father was there somewhere. At some point the body disappears. The three people in the house are soon joined by others who are looking for a specific person, and a diamond necklace that was stolen. Shenanigans happen ending in an extended chase scene down a back staircase in the house which leads to a cellar which has another staircase that leads down to a train line. Very odd architecture but it works well for the start of a huge chase scene between a train and a bus. Both are filmed in miniature, as well as full size. It felt like Hitchcock took the excitement from the chase at the end of Blackmail and thought - lets add five more elements to this. And while the filming can be a bit cheesy due to the miniatures, it is still a very exciting sequence. I believe this is also one of the earlier films where two people who don't know each other are handcuffed together, or tied-up together. This becomes a bit of a trope in Hitchcock moving forward.

So far Number Seventeen is one of my favorites that I have watched. While I like some of his earlier films, this one is so Hitchcock that it is worth finding and watching. The characters don't have much to them, adn from some of the reading I have done - the play, and therefore the film, are both parodies of these sorts of thrillers. There is a possible cameo on the bus, and I watched this as part of the Legend Series. However I think Criterion should come out with a version as stylistically it is very Hitchcock...though some people disagree.