Number seventeen
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Number seventeen |
| Original title | Number Seventeen |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1932 |
| length | 63 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alfred Hitchcock |
| script |
Alma Reville Alfred Hitchcock Rodney Ackland |
| production |
John Maxwell for British International Pictures |
| music | Adolph Hallis |
| camera |
John J. Cox Bryan Langley |
| occupation | |
| |
Seventeen number is a British thriller by Alfred Hitchcock in the year 1932 , based on the eponymous play by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. It is most likely to be assigned to the genre of the criminal grotesque .
action
In a dark, eerie house in London, a group of characters, all linked to a stolen necklace, meet, including the jewel thieves, a tramp, a detective and a young girl. The confusing situation finally leads to a chase between a train and a bus.
background
Number seventeen is the film adaptation of the play of the same name by Joseph Jefferson Farjean . It was a commissioned work for British International Pictures , which Hitchcock was reluctant to take on, as at this point he had already started two projects that interested him more: the semi-autobiographical film We Are Finally Rich , which he then directed after number seventeen , and the film adaptation of the successful play London Wall by Thomas van Druyten , which the director Thomas Bentley then undertook under the title After Office Hours . Curiously enough, Bentley would have preferred number seventeen instead of this film .
Hitchcock said there was little to be got out of the cliché-laden play. He finally had the idea of saving the film and at the same time outsmarting the bosses at BIP by making a parody of gangster and spy films out of the original. He wanted to push all clichés to extremes and this should be done so subtly that as little as possible in the BIP executive suite noticed. Alfred and Alma Hitchcock finally wrote an outrageous script with the scriptwriter Rodney Ackland , which contradicted every common dramaturgy and every logic and which in the end was nevertheless accepted by the producers.
The story contains a number of motifs that run like a red thread through Hitchcock's filmography: The MacGuffin (here an ominous necklace) that everyone is after and which triggers the turbulent plot, a dark, eerie house, a furious chase ( which was filmed easily recognizable with model vehicles), a man and a woman who are innocently in danger and between whom a romance develops. As usual, Hitchcock played with light and shadow, with oblique camera angles and he draped tons of small details that make the film a pleasure for some, even when watching it several times. Number seventeen is Hitchcock's fourth thriller, but the first with a distinctly comedic twist - a genre that the Hitchcock name should have stood for for decades like no other.
The film was a commercial failure, probably because it was too gaudy and illogical as a thriller and, on the other hand, too little pointed as a comedy and above all because the chase that dominates the film turns out to be completely pointless in the end. Hitchcock himself later called the film "a disaster" and reluctantly talked about it. The film critic Hans-Christoph Blumenberg wrote much later about number seventeen : “A film that one has to protect against its author; a film; which is far better than its reputation; one of the best from Hitchcock's English period. "
Web links
- Number Seventeen in the Internet Movie Database (English)