© 2007 William Ahearn
“Number 17” is another seminal film by Alfred Hitchcock
that debuts devices that he will employ again and again. There is the first
appearance of the redeemable bad girl that will show up in “Blackmail,”
“Sabotage,” “Marnie,” “Notorious” “North
by Northwest” and other films. Handcuffs also are used as they were
in “The Lodger.” (The most ridiculous appearance of the handcuffs
is where the hero saws them off using a fan or fan belt of a car as seen in
the otherwise generic “Saboteur.” ) And there is the lower class
(as seen by Hitchcock) character that moves the plot along as also seen in
“Young and Innocent” and other films.
“Number 17” is the birth of the MacGuffin. A MacGuffin
is a plot device that moves the story along. Usually, it is an object and
in this case it’s a stolen necklace. And Hitchcock would make many,
many MacGuffin-based films, most notably “North by Northwest.”
The MacGuffin as a device precedes Hitchcock and is an age-old standard since
it could be argued that the golden fleece of Greek mythology is a MacGuffin.
Die-hard Hitchcock fans will admit that “Number 17” makes
no sense whatsoever. Even so, it’s a fun film with bodies that get up
and walk away, women falling into rooms through the roof and the silliest
chase scene involving a bus and a train. There’s an odd scene when the
bad guys take over the train and they shoot the stoker. After they jump into
the cab of the locomotive, the engineer faints. That’s when the bad
guys start playing with the levers and knobs and getting the train up to full
speed before they break the lever that can slow the train. It would be slapstick
if Hitchcock weren’t trying to build suspense.
This film will also echo through “Foreign Correspondent,”
an action packed flick and well-worth seeing if you’re a Hitchcock fan.
It is in his early films that Hitchcock shows he gets cinema. Visually
“Number 17” is fun but it is films like this one and many to follow
that would gain Hitchcock the reputation of making fluffy and forgettable
movies.