Alfred Hitchcock called Number Seventeen a disaster.
The picture was assigned to Hitchcock by Elstree Studios as a “quota” picture, films that were 100% produced in Great Britain with British casts and crew that could be imported to America. Hitchcock was hoping to be given John Van Druten’s play London Wall (1931) to adapt but was instead handed Number Seventeen, an old dark house play written by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. In protest Hitchcock apparently decided to turn the project into…
Although many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films contain dark humor, only a handful can be classified as comedies, and the success of those films is often debated. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and The Trouble with Harry (1955) both have their fans, but they’re usually few in number, not very vocal, or both, yet they far outweigh those who’ve even seen Rich and Strange.
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www.andywolverton.com/post/the-alfred-hitchcock-project-14-rich-and-strange-1931
If you’re a film noir lover and want to convert others, The Narrow Margin may just be the best movie to give them. It contains several noir components, but is also a fine thriller in its own right. LAPD Detective Walter Brown (Charles McGraw) and his partner are assigned to travel to Chicago to escort a mob boss’s widow (Marie Windsor) to appear before a Los Angeles grand jury. Only some people in the criminal underworld aren’t very excited about…
