Musashi94 Taken separately from the rest of the film, the first half of Number Seventeen is probably the worst thing Hitchcock has ever done. The plot is so confusing that I had almost no idea what was going on. A character's supposed to be mute, so when she speaks it's supposed to be a surprise, but her supposed muteness is so poorly conveyed that I had no idea that she was supposed to be a mute. The whole reason for anyone to be there in the first place is similarly nebulous and I'm still not exactly sure why the police inspector is pursuing the criminals either.The acting is also pretty atrocious; special mention goes to Leon M. Lion who gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a professional motion picture. The garbled audio quality certainly doesn't help, but again going by the acting, it's probably merciful we don't get to hear all of the dialogue. The chase scene and train crash at the end is rather exciting – and the only really worthwhile part of Number Seventeen – but it's not enough to redeem the awful first half.

jacobs-greenwood You can witness elements of what will become the director's style, but overall the pace is fairly plodding and the story pretty lame and confusing. One immediately notices the experimentation with the camera, from the hand held shot at the beginning when the actor John Stuart enters the "house for let", to the many candle lit scenes as the characters mount the stairs and explore the house, to the quick cuts used later in the chase to add suspense.Additionally, the comic elements used during moments of tension foreshadow the director's later works. One shot, which he used again in The 39 Steps (1935), occurs when the two men discover the body and their screams are masked by a passing train's whistle. The suspenseful, harrowing chase, though clearly done with miniatures, is also a tried and true characteristic later associated with Hitchcock, to say nothing of the use of trains in his films in general.The story begins with "Stuart" entering an abandoned house, full of cobwebs. He soon meets another man, a rather odd cockney-accented Igor type, who says his name is Ben, and the two of them stumble upon a corpse. Rather oddly, "Stuart" is able to "control" Ben, and there are some really slow moments where not enough tension is built before the next thing happens. Plus, oftentimes what happens next is not enough of a payoff for our wait. There are also some seemly disconnected cutaways, e.g. to doors slamming etc., which show us that the great director was still finding his way in this film.Shortly thereafter, a young woman (Nora) falls through the rotted ceiling and onto the two men. She provides a clue, a telegram from her father which mentions necklace stolen by Sheldrake from a detective named Barton. Soon there is a knock at the door which "Stuart" goes to answer. After inserting a card with Number Seventeen scrawled on it, a man and a woman are revealed behind the door. They want to see the "house for let". As "Stuart" is closing the door, a second man, not connected with the man and woman, also enters.When all of them mount the stairs, "Stuart" tries to slow them so they won't discover the corpse, but Ben informs him that the body has disappeared. This leads the two men and woman, who is identified by one of the men as a deaf-mute (and looks a little like Mary Astor), to take control. They tie up "Stuart" and Nora while Ben hides in another room. Ben is then "strangled" by Sheldrake, the "corpse", who'd been hiding in the room. With far too many cuts back and forth between the prone Ben and Sheldrake, who's not sure Ben is really "out", Sheldrake removes the diamonded necklace from the loo (the director's humor was in tact back then;-) but unbeknownst to him, Ben pilfers it from him before he exits.What follows is a really poorly done fight sequence which allows Sheldrake's gang (the two men & the woman) to leave after tying up "Stuart" and Nora. A chase ensues with perhaps the most suspense the film can manage, though it feels somewhat overlong. A crash, a rescue in water, and a couple of not altogether unexpected twists end the film.

writers_reign Billy Wilder, a far greater filmmaker than Hitchcock could ever aspire to be, had a penchant for the name Sheldrake; he bestowed it on a Producer played by Fred Clark in Sunset Boulevard and almost a decade later he gave it to Fred MacMurray in The Apartment. In Number Seventeen Garry Marsh plays a character named Sheldrake and that, I'm afraid, is about as close to a genius like Wilder as journeyman Hitch ever came, despite the hype, PR and King's New Clothes element that clings to him like ectoplasm. If you're happy to go along with a plot that has a wind blow the hat off a character in the first minute and on retrieving it he decides, on a whim, to explore an old house with a For Sale/Rent sign in front of it, and then becomes embroiled with a disappearing corpse and a gang of jewel thieves then don't let me spoil your enjoyment. I'll be watching re-runs of 'Crossroads' which have more to offer.

Petri Pelkonen A group of criminals have committed a jewel robbery.They gather in an old house.In that house is also a detective, a man called Ben and a woman called Nora.Number Seventeen (1932) is an Alfred Hitchcock film.It's based on the play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon.The cast includes Leon M. Lion, who plays Ben.Anne Grey plays Nora.John Stuart is Barton-The Detective.Donald Calthrop is Brant.Ann Casson plays Rose Ackroyd.I found this film on a VHS from the library a little while back.Hitchcock came up with much better than this later in his career.He went on to make some of the biggest classics in movie history.This early work is very mediocre.But the movie is quite funny from time to time.Some of it may be unintentional, though.And the train sequence works.Visually the movie looks good.Just watch those shadows play in the house.Hitchcock himself stated this film being a disaster.But Hitchcock at worst isn't all that bad.