Number Seventeen

Plot synopsis:
Detective Barton is searching for a necklace stolen by a gang of thieves. In the beginning, the gang is in a house in London, before going on the run.
The film starts off with Detective Barton (John Stuart) arriving at a house marked for sale or rent. The door is unlocked and he wanders in. An unknown person with a candle is wandering about and a dead body is found. When confronted the mysterious person claims innocence of the murdered person. Barton (who introduces himself as Forsythe) asks the stranger what he has in his pockets (handkerchief, string, sausage, picture of a child, half a cigarette), before the shadow of a hand is shown reaching for a doorknob. The stranger (who later introduces himself as Ben) searches the body of the dead person and finds handcuffs and a gun which he takes.
The detective returns from investigating the weird sound and finds the handcuffs which the stranger left on the ground. A person is seen to be crawling on the roof through shadows, who then falls through the roof. This is a woman called Miss Ackroyd (Ann Casson) who is revived and cries out for her father. She explains that her father went onto the roof and that they are next door in number 15.
The bell tolls half past midnight and the dead body has disappeared. Three people arrive at the windswept house, Mr. Ackroyd (Henry Caine), Nora (Anne Grey) (who is deaf and dumb) and a third person. Ben draws out the gun. Ben accidentally shoots the governor. Mr. Ackroyd draws out a gun and asks him to search the gentlemen, Ben and Miss Ackroyd. The telegram is revealed to Mr. Ackroyd. Sheldrake (Garry Marsh) gets the diamond necklace, which he has hidden in the upper portion of a toilet. Ben causes a commotion and is locked away with Sheldrake.
The two hands of Sheldrake reach out and appear to strangle Ben who is only pretending to be knocked out. More members of the gang arrive. They suggest tying up Miss Ackroyd and 'Forsythe'. The three thieves all have to catch a train. However, one of the "thieves" is Miss Ackroyd's father—a police officer—who locks away two of the thieves and frees Miss Ackroyd and Doyle. He opens the door where Ben is locked away with Sheldrake and gets into a fist fight with Sheldrake.
The other man reveals himself as Sheldrake (the supposed 'corpse' from earlier) and frees the others. Miss Ackroyd and 'Forsythe' are tied up again. Nora reveals herself to be able to speak and says "I'm coming back". She comes back and frees Miss Ackroyd and Doyle. Miss Ackroyd faints but recovers. Nora returns to the basement to allay the suspicions of the other thieves and buy time for the rest to get away. They free Ben and Miss Ackroyd's father. The thieves arrive at the train yard, and board a freight train that is departing. The train says Deutsch-Englischer Fahrverkehr Ferry Service between Germany-Great Britain.
The train departs with Ben aboard and he stumbles onto crates of wine. The thieves, after dispatching the conductor, go to the front of the train, shoot the fireman, and catch the Driver as he faints. 'Forsythe' failed to get on the train before it departed and commandeers a bus. Ben is revealed to have the necklace. Sheldrake discovers he doesn't have the diamond and the thieves fight each other. Sheldrake claims that 'Barton' a detective posing as a thief. A chase scene occurs on the train as the thieves go after Barton. Barton escapes and handcuffs Nora. The bus that 'Forsythe' is on races after the train. The thieves, realising the train is accelerating, try to find the brakes. They turn dials helplessly and notice the bus that 'Forsythe' is on.
Pushing levers and turning dials does nothing, indeed, it only makes the train go faster, leaving the thieves unable to escape. At the dock, the ferry pulls up. As 'Forsythe' watches, the train hurtles through the dock, crashes into the train currently on the ferry at full speed, and pushes it out to sea, dragging the remaining cars into the ocean. People are rescued from the water. Henry Doyle tells Forsythe that he is posing as Detective Barton. But Forsythe is actually Detective Barton, who says to Doyle, "You can't be Barton because I am." All of the thieves are apprehended by the police who are on the scene. Nora asks Barton, "What are you going to do about it?" Barton replied "You better come along with me." Nora says "Where?" "To breakfast." Barton says, and they laugh. Ben then reveals he has the diamond necklace.

Tags: suspenseful, murder

Review:
One of Alfred Hitchcock's British (earlier) movies, "Number Seventeen" shows his touch in many of its interesting and creative details, and it is an entertaining film, although the plot is rather chaotic and often confusing.The story concerns a vacant house ("number seventeen") on which several different persons converge for various reasons.
If you watch it over again, you realize that everything does fit together pretty well, but it is quite hard to catch everything the first time through.The somewhat confusing plot is redeemed by a lot of Hitchcock touches.
After a rather slow beginning, it gets your attention and keeps it until the end."Number Seventeen" probably could have been a much better movie if the plot and characters had been developed more carefully, but it is still pretty entertaining as it is.
It's certainly not up to the standard of Hitchcock's later work, but it's a moderately enjoyable film both in itself and for the insight it offers into Hitchcock's development as a director.The plot is rather complex and can be a bit difficult to follow at times.
Hitchcock's early movie from British period with thrilling ending chase in scale models.
The picture deals with a deserted house in London as scenario where we find a suspecting hobo (Leon Lion , film producer and he played similar role at stage) , a young girl called Nora (Grey), a detective and a gang of thieves involving the robbery of a necklace .
The film has various Hitchcock touches as well as the ¨McGuffin¨ , this time seem to be the robbed necklace ; furthermore , the overlong and exciting chase sequence of a train and a bus realized with a maquettes and miniatures .
It's a neat trick to bring the audience into the action, having us become the camera and discover the environment, and yet at the same time keeping the man's identity and purpose unknown.What follows is a steady descent into the depths of farce, with exaggerated performances, sped-up fist fights and too many ridiculous plot twists and character introductions to really keep up with.
Eventually, the entire cast will end up in a mad chase between a runaway train carrying the bad guys and a bus commandeered by the good guys (or so it seems).Thoough not one of Hitchcock's best early films, Number 17 is certainly amusing and contains a lot of intentional comedy that many critics seem to want to ignore, keeps a steady, if hectic, pace and boasts some pretty affective use of miniatures for the 1930s.
NUMBER SEVENTEEN is one of the very few films Alfred Hitchcock made that has aged poorly.
While it doesn't lack merit as a rollicking little caper, the story is too confusing for the film to be enjoyed, and surprisingly enough the direction is clumsy and the whole thing ends up rather incoherent.There may be a reason for this.
While this is something that rarely happens in his catalog as director, you can sense the same thing to a lesser extent in STAGE FRIGHT and THE SKIN GAME, yet the technical competence of the former and the fine source material and performances of the latter make those more fun and interesting to see than this.The real crime here is witnessing the failure of one of Hitch's only stabs at an old-dark-house mystery; it's a severe disappointment that he didn't explore the potential of the story to a greater degree.
To a fan of the director, it's essential but a bit off-putting.One good point is the closing chase sequence, which takes up a major chunk of the movie's second half (the total running time is only an hour).
Hitchcock's Number Seventeen has to be his most experimental film by far and it's actually quite an enjoyable watch from a technical perspective if you can get beyond the confusing plot.
The film is basically divided into to parts (2 acts almost - this movie runs just over an hour) the first taking place in a deserted house and the second being a wacky chase between a bus and a train.
This really is far from top form for the great Alfred Hitchcock but is an interesting, sometimes exciting film with Hitchcock touches which lift it above its average origins.It is important to remember that this is in keeping with most early talkies in appearing odd and over acted.
Camera shots and outdoor filming was made more difficult and sound was poor.The 'classic' Frankenstein directed by James Whale is more over acted and has more bizarre dialogue than this, both that film and this one have enough qualities to overcome the dated nature of nearly all early talkies though.The plot is interesting and strange but is not fully thought through.
One of Alfred Hitchcock's British earlies: "Number Seventeen" shows his experimentation in the area of suspense and atmosphere.
The plot is shaky and frankly I didn't quite get it in the first time around but I enjoyed the fact that you never knew who anyone was, were they telling the truth?The story involves a vacant house in which assorted characters meet up for various reasons and possibly nefarious purposes.A jewel heist is at the core of the situation but that is just the Maguffin as it is hard to fathom why some of the characters have any good reason for being in the house.
audience, it doesn't excuse the poor, choppy quality of the film.It's hard to follow the plot because Hitchcock fails to let us in on certain details.
Hitchcock clearly has had a lot of fun showing off the tricks of the trade that he had learned in Germany, and the film is often a delight to watch.On the other hand, the plot is complete tripe, and it can start to grate in the middle of this short film.
Having read some less-than-brilliant reviews about 'Number Seventeen,' an early work of Hitchcock, I was a bit tentative about how good it would actually be.
However, by the end of the film, I was pleasantly surprised!The film starts very slowly, and Hitchcock takes time to develop the characters and the setting, and to begin building the suspense.
There's also a detective trailing them and some innocent people get mixed up in it.The story makes little sense and the British accents are hard to understand.Also there's a character called Ben (Leon M.
Number Seventeen is, to my best of knowledge, a really primitive, early sound-era experimental thriller where plot suspense gets thrown out the window in lieu of cinematic tricks, really goofy near-slapstick type violence, and a climax that had me transfixed as well as laughing my head off.
Strange to think that a film by the master of suspense could be borderline (if not just) incoherent, but here it is, a picture where the twists and double-crosses (i.e. that scene towards the end involving Barton) keep coming at a fast, rambling clip, until all one can know for sure is that Ben (Leon M.
But what is one to think of seeing the all-too-long train chase, that contains as many implausible bits of human action as much as stupid shots of the train moving model-wise (was I watching an episode of the lost Thunderbirds collection or something?).Now, on another level though, Hitchcock does pull off a somewhat entertaining picture- and probably more than anything based on what he had to know was too goofy and delirious to take seriously, like when the fist-fights break out, or when Lion has to act like he's knocked out when a man puts a one hand on his neck to knock him out, and glances back to see if Ben is asleep about 10 times (it's maybe one of the funniest scenes I've ever seen in a Hitchcock movie).
It's a good-looking picture with some nice "old dark house" atmosphere going for it and the beginning and ending are sequences worthy of consideration for Hitch's 1930s highlight reel.
And Number Seventeen is one of them, of Hitchcock's films it is in my bottom 3 along with Juno and the Paycock and Jamaica Inn. But it is a little better than those two, because it actually does feel like Hitchcock, but unfortunately not Hitchcock at his best.
There are some of Hitchcock's touches like the McGuffin and the final twenty minutes, but there is really the sense that his heart was not in it and that he had little interest in the film.
The story suffers from being convoluted, things being left underdeveloped and under-explained due to the too short length and pacing that is, especially in the first third of the film(the final twenty minutes is really where Number Seventeen really comes to life), as creaky as nearly broken floorboards.
Early Alfred Hitchcock film that finds a bunch of criminals gathered at a house following a jewel robbery.
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..
The police trace the jewels and also turn up for the hunt; wino gets a gun and only complicates matters, for the characters this film as well as the viewers watching it.Allegedly neither Hitchcock, nor his co-screenwriter Rodney Ackland wanted anything to do with this movie, so, again allegedly, they tried to make this screenplay as absurd as they could.
They succeeded anyway, as it rarely makes sense (a cop is somehow able to stop a bullet from hitting girl by blocking it with his hand?) and film only occasionally has some of Hitchcock's style and sense of detail showing through the confused and illogical muddle.Good climactic chase between a bus hijacked by cop and a train, which ultimately crashes into a ferry and sinks into the river, but the model-work is hit and miss, some shots are effective looking and other shots are pitiful, like something filmed in a kid's bathtub..
A remake with a clearer plot and good special effects could actually be an interesting movie.The film is just quirky and dull.
So I decided to check out this early Hitchcock film one night, and thirty minutes in I felt like I had found a real hidden gem.
To me, Hitchcock's best films are the ones that deal with characters stuck in confined places, and this seemed like the precursor to films like "Lifeboat" and "Rope".The first half of the film is really atmospheric and sets up a cast of really interesting and fun characters, as well as a pretty solid mystery.However then the characters break out of the house they're stuck in and it becomes a pretty boring train/bus chase that has an unsatisfying conclusion.
Only the final scene alone, which is created through one of the best use of miniature models in cinema history, is worthy to watch the film.Twist after twist without any space for take a breath between make this high pace comedy thriller bit confusing, but it is still fun entertainment..
Although occasionally out of balance with comedic overtones following with dark shadowy play, the fast pace of the movie and never ending twists and surprises manage to keep the film on track.
"Number Seventeen" came at a time when Alfred Hitchcock seemed to be slightly struggling in taking his career to a new level of greatness.
Scary empty house with a corpse, deaf and mute lady and a runaway train, intriguing early Hitchcock masterpiece.
I've seen this film a few years back, forgot about it and finally ran across it in a film pack - very glad they added this one, it's good to see it again.The film is mainly in a "spooky old house" setting with wailing winds, great shadows, strange characters, a murder(?), a stolen necklace, a great chase, humor splashed about and a story that is simple but good.
This is not an Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece but it's a fun one.Try to watch this film without taking it seriously - remember it's entertainment and artful in it's way (the cinematography and directing.) 9/10.
You would be hard pressed to find another very Low-Budget Movie from the early thirties with a final Third Act so frantically edited and exciting in its use of quick cuts and miniature manipulation.It zips along with a frenetic chase between a bus and a train and finally a Docking Pier that eerily anticipates modern Film Technique.
Supposedly based on an "old dark house" type of play that has been remade countless times, the original story could not possibly have involved everything found here: a reckless chase between a runaway rain run by presumed jewel thieves in which The Girl sits handcuffed, with a bus (all done in pretty accurate miniatures, of course) rushing towards a drawbridge where a freight ship is accosted, with the inevitable final crash, death-defying last-minute rescue and happy ending with a double twist.
He was making mediocre and problem filled films like Number 17, a crime thriller about a group of criminals who rendezvous at a safe house after stealing a very valuable necklace.
Also, I don't usually critique a movie on technical aspects like this, but the sound quality in Number 17 is absolutely dreadful, and it makes it really hard to understand what the characters are saying at times because of the hollow muffled quality of the dialogue.But there's a silver lining to all the disaster in this shoddy film.
When Hitchcock isn't making a film with a great plot or decent characters, he's still doing something right.
Each of his early mediocre films seems to have something interesting in it in the way that Hitchcock directs.
Number Seventeen (1932)** 1/2 (out of 4)Extremely strange film from Hitchcock has a tramp (Leon M.
I've seen just about every movie from the director and this is without question one of his strangest and while it doesn't completely work in the end it's still an interesting film.
This old Alfred Hitchcock film is extremely tough to watch, as the film (even by 1931 standards) has very poor sound and the print is pretty bad as well.
It is essentially an "old dark house" film (which were very common in the era from 1920-1935) and the plot really makes no sense.
My only interest was that Hitchcock made the film and I am interesting in seeing his early development.
Even then, the tension is often undercut with some arresting implausibilities, and amateurish editing (e.g., during the runaway train sequence, they use the same bit of film with our two jewel thieves looking out the door of the engine, at least three different times).This was an awkward era for movies.
This film also climaxes with an exciting set piece action sequence, another distinctive characteristic of later Hitchcock movies (e.g The Thirty Nine Steps, Saboteur, North By Northwest, etc.) Modern-day viewers will undoubtedly find Number Seventeen a rather primitive affair, but taken in the context of when it was made it is an intriguing, interesting thriller that any Hitch enthusiast should try to see at least once.Undercover detective Barton (John Stuart) turns up at an unoccupied house  no.
It's interesting that he uses both prominently in what is probably the one film where we really see him enjoying himself.Hitchcock was near the end of his contract with British International Pictures when he was given the play "Number 17" to adapt, and virtually no budget (10,000 GBP).
Lion as the homeless man Ben,who perfectly suits the films mix of comedy and mystery Film Noir with a great performance that is able to show the character getting into some funny situations,whilst still having a sense of unease around the events that are unfolding in the house.With the second half of the film being much more "comedic",it seems that as the film becomes less serious,Hichcock seems to become less interested in the film,with a chase scene that ends up just looking like a three year old child smashing his plastic train into a wall.Thankfully,the first half of the the film,is able to make the short-comings of the second half be easily forgotten,with Hitchcock almost turning the film into a brilliant Haunted House movie,that is filled with a fantastic shadowy candle-lit Noir look,which helps make the scary search round the house extremely enjoyable.Final view on the film:A very well-directed "spooky" first half,let down by a more comedic poorly done second half..
COMMENT: After a splendid introductory tracking shot into the deserted house, the direction becomes more static for the first half of this film which obviously follows the complicated (yet suspenseful) plot twists and turns of the original stage play pretty closely.Over-acting atrociously, Leon M.
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.
Things don't exactly "happen" in "Number Seventeen", an early sound film from Hitchcock's pre-Golden period.
Taken separately from the rest of the film, the first half of Number Seventeen is probably the worst thing Hitchcock has ever done.
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..