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Monday, May 2, 2022

NUMBER 17 (1932)

Flummoxing Alfred Hitchcock completists for decades, this comic thrilller wouldn’t have felt particularly unfamiliar to audiences of the day after popular fare like THE OLD DARK HOUSE/’32, THE CAT AND THE CANARY/’27 or THE BAT WHISPERS/’30.  But would have looked just as bad.  Hitch’s comments (in toto) per his seminal interview book HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT:  ‘A disaster.’  And yet Hitchcockians need to see it, but will have to sit tight thru the first five reels, stuck in a ‘vacant’ house infested with ‘not’ dead bodies; jewel thieves; undercover cops; a deeply unfunny ‘comic cockney’; ladies with a penchant for furs & handcuffs; and a putative renter with a nose for trouble who bumps into a scam no one could possibly make head or tails of.  Under the gaze of a surprisingly mobile camera & pointless visual trick shots hoping to liven things up, business plays out at a glacial pace except for a pair of amusingly undercranked fight scenes.  (Did the sound engineer order the cast from picking up their cues?)  At last we clear out for the final reel & a half, a dilly of a chase sequence via train and bus.  A fabulist’s conception of speed & movement with more cul-de-sacs than a 10-episode serial, setting up a crash of a climax with everything changing over to delightful miniatures, a demented out-of-control toy train set (the deluxe model with the bus); anticipating Orson Welles’ famous quote upon first entering R.K.O. Studios: ‘This is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Finally available in pristine condition, marginally helping the drama inside the house before the film comes to life with those glistening trains, both real & toy.   Uptick in watchablility comparable to the improvement thru a proper restoration in Paul Leni's THE CAT AND THE CANARY, mentioned above.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/01/cat-and-canary-1927.html

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