Year of Release: 1932Country of Origin: UK
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Leon M. Lion, Anne Grey, John Stuart
Plot outline: A gang of thieves gather at a safe house following a robbery, but a detective is on their trail (IMDb).
An assortment of Hitchcock's greatest early movies are featured in a three-disc collection.
Based on a stage play by J. Jefferson Farjeon, rather than make a serious thriller, Hitchcock used the opportunity to send up the genre as far as he could, whilst performing experiments with lighting and camera movement which would have been impossible on a more conventional movie. The end result is truly bizarre – looking like a film noir that was concocted in Britain’s maddest lunatic asylum. This movie is certainly an atypical Hitchcock movie - an unbridled parody of the low budget crime thrillers that were prevalent in the early 1930s. It probably helped that this movie had a shoestring budget – evidenced by the poor quality of the models in the chaotic denouement. This movie has often been criticised for its production weaknesses and virtually incomprehensible plot, but such criticisms generally miss the point of the movie. Number Seventeen is a warning of what cinema was in danger of becoming - a mindless spectacle of muddled intrigue and artistic self-indulgence, without any real substance or meaning. If Hitchcock were around today he would probably grin nonchalantly and mutter: "I told you so." (JT)My judgement: ** out of 4 stars
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