Number 17

 

           Still going in the simple movie watching sense, mostly finding some movies in the 90-minute range, decided to watch an early Alfred Hitchcock film that was made in the early 1930's England. Moreover, since my Stanley Kubrick journey is coming to an end, I figured it's time to go on another journey but this time finding famous directors’ earlier films that no one has even touched or presented, furthermore Number 17 came into my radar, especially when is sixty-five minutes of runtime. 

             In an empty London house, a hobo named Ben (Leon M. Lion) looks for shelter yet instead finds a corpse. When Detective Fordyce (John Stuart) shows up, he questions Ben but is interrupted when a girl (Ann Casson) falls through the roof. Her father has vanished, and she's received an instructible telegram that mentions both the house and a missing necklace. Soon more suspicious characters turn up, all looking for the necklace, and none of them who they claim to be. 

             I think if you set aside the fast action sequences of the 30's films where the robber or the banker is being chased by the cop and they shot the sequences in a fast pace where they're running in a comedic fashion like someone rescuing a woman from being run over by the train. You'll see a lot of it in this movie, but in all honesty this film has that great flair of being an importantly, good example in knowing how to make your first movie or short film and make it into simplest form possible like you have a warehouse bunch of characters after a robbery or friends hanging out and get caught in the cross hairs of a bunch of killers or bank robbers and their taken hostage and you simply have it set in a warehouse and create drama as well as start your story there. And while watching this film a bunch of times I have to say that this is one of those films that inspire me to want to write a short film and just create a simple story of a hostage situation or an after bank robbery and either way I love the way this film was constructed. While through the course of the film, I had to admit that this entire film was just going to be set in the warehouse and a struggle happens and then that's it that's the film, what I didn't expect is a high octane chase between a bus and a steam engine and of course this is thirties style of filmmaking and you would probably use a train set and small bus toy to make it look like that their driving so fast, and again it's amusingly funny because of what they had to make and the same goes with the fight scenes because I would at least imagine that Hitch had a way to make a normal fight but I guess not, though still believe that these high octane sequences are amusingly funny but is also amazed on how they were able to shoot the movie with very little resources on what they had at the time. This film is free on all types of streaming services with ads from YouTube to Tubi and even Amazon Prime, and so, if you’re looking to watch any of Hitchcock's earlier works then I would highly recommend watching Number 17, it's a great watch of early thirties cinema and more importantly amusing with the action sequences but more importantly I would highly recommend anyone to watch this if you’re looking for a way to start off your film by doing a short film by making it thirty or sixty minutes long for the audience.