Informal Review of Alfred Hitchcock's "Number 17"

Alfred Hitchcock’s Number 17 is about a group of individuals who are searching an old abandoned house for various reasons. Among our cast of characters we have a detective, a homeless man, a father-daughter duo, a supposedly deaf woman, and three other shady men. Through a series of events it is discovered that diamonds have been hidden in the house, which is appropriately numbered “17,” and that most of these characters have come to the house for the sole purpose of finding them. They are also to make their getaway on a train that is also numbered “17.” The film ends with a series of chase scenes involving the number 17 train and a bus, with the villains getting their just deserts, and with the diamonds being recovered and, supposedly, turned in to the authorities. While Number 17 had great visuals for a black and white film, it suffered greatly in terms of sound and storytelling.

Number 17’s strong point was its dark, creepy imagery, especially its use of shadows. The house that most of the film takes place in was so dark that the characters constantly had use matches or candlesticks in order to see. This resulted in numerous shadows being present for most of the film. These shadows were used in several ways. They were used to further the plot in some instances, such as when the detective saw a large shadow of a hand on the wall, which belonged to a (supposed) corpse on one of the upper floors. However, shadows were mainly used to provide atmosphere and to help the audience keep track of where characters were at any given moment, even if they were not in the room that the audience was currently viewing. Unfortunately, for as great as the imagery was, the sound was terrible. Due to the poor quality of older sound, a constant whirring sound in the background, and the hard to understand accents of the characters, I couldn’t understand what was being said most of the time. However, my main qualm with Number 17 was that the movie could not set a constant tone. Did it want to be a serious mystery or a gut-busting comedy? It tried so hard to be both, that it was neither. The serious moments were fantastic, but were often interrupted by humor that seemed shoe-horned in. Some scenes that should have been serious were made unintentionally comical because they were sped up and were choppily edited or by what I like to call Ben’s “bug-eye” face. By the time we were half way through the film I was bored out of my mind. Put simply, Hitchcock’s Number 17 had the potential to be a good film, but failed because the film did not know what it wanted to be. I give this movie a big thumbs down.