“Let that be a lesson to you: Never have any children.”
“Sir, you have beaten my wife and she has gone off with another man. You are a dirty dog.”
“Hullo, are you still here? Have you lost your whistle or something?”
“Well, if there is any trouble, I hope you’ll remember you’re to blame.”
“You will be smuggled, my friend, when, how and where I am pleased for you to be smuggled.”
“Before receiving the first degree of the Seventh Gold Ray, your mind must be wiped blank.”
“Tell her they may soon be leaving us. Leaving us for a long, long journey. How is it that Shakespeare says? ‘From which no traveler returns.’ Great poet.”

–The Man Who Knew Too Much

In 1933, famous but without a contract, Hitchcock reached what he would later call “my lowest ebb,” directing Waltzes from Vienna for an independent producer associated with the A-list branch of his old studio: Gaumont-British (G-B). It was a light-hearted musical about the love-life of Johann Strauss Jr. and his composition of “The Blue Danube.” The film is today as rare as Hitchcock’s 4th film, Downhill, and has only been released on DVD in Europe, so it will have to be passed over.

Gaumont-British was now under new ownership, but Hitchcock’s old friend and champion, Michael Balcon, was still in charge of the management. The two ran into each other on the set of Waltzes from Vienna, and Balcon discovered that Hitch had no further projects lined up. Initially awkward upon encountering Balcon, Hitch soon warmed up and told him about a thriller he had been developing for BIP before it had been killed for financial reasons.

When Balcon expressed interest, Hitchcock immediately bought the rights back from BIP and sold them to Balcon for twice the amount (guilt later prompted him to buy Balcon a gift with the profits). On the strength of the idea, Hitch was signed to a five-year contract with G-B. It was a deal which would ultimately turn him into a global sensation, and cement his reputation permanently.

The first of his films for Balcon was originally titled Bulldog Drummond’s Baby, and it was to be the latest in a series featuring war-veteran-turned-private-detective “Bulldog” Drummond. However, BIP owned the rights to the character, so when Hitch jumped ship, the project developed into something completely different, and probably much better: The Man Who Knew Too Much. Charles Bennett, who had written the play Blackmail a few years earlier, wrote the screenplay. He would be a frequent collaborator with Hitch during the remainder of his British period.

In the movie, a small British family (husband, wife and daughter, just like Hitchcock’s) is vacationing at a ski resort in Switzerland, where they befriend a Frenchman named Louis Bernard. When Bernard is assassinated while he dances with the wife, he whispers a message to her that could have an enormous impact on the future of Europe. Before husband and wife can tell the British authorities what they know, their daughter is kidnapped and they are warned to stay silent if they ever want to see her again.

With this film, Hitch continued to develop the idea of the MacGuffin, in this case making it a vague assassination plot amidst an indistinct landscape of espionage and international politics. The audience is never sure why the assassination is significant, or who is really behind it, but with ominous references to Archduke Ferdinand and the general atmosphere of unrest in Europe after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, they don’t need to. Hitchcock had been influenced early in his career by the expressionist visual style of German filmmakers, and had been among the first to experiment with expressionist sound in 1929’s Blackmail. This was expressionist storytelling.

The birth of Nazi Germany didn’t only have an effect on the development of the story. Peter Lorre, a Hungarian Jew, had achieved international cinematic fame as a notorious child-killer in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Lorre fled the country, eventually ending up in London, where he was soon cast as Abbott, the charming villain in Hitchcock’s latest film. Leslie Banks would play Lawrence, the protagonist, with Edna Best as his wife Jill and a celebrated young actress, Nova Pilbeam, as their teenage daughter Betty.

Not only was The Man Who Knew Too Much Lorre’s first English-language film, he knew almost nothing of the language before shooting began, learning most of his part phonetically. Hitchcock had no idea that this was the case when they first met, and Lorre bluffed his way through the conversation by smiling, nodding, saying “yes” and laughing uproariously whenever he thought Hitch had just finished a story.

The film begins with an assortment of Swiss travel brochures before cutting to a beautiful scenic shot which it lays the credits over. The film proper opens on a ski slope. Lawrence and Betty are watching Louis Bernard perform a jump when Betty’s dachshund wriggles loose from her arms and runs out into the middle of the course. Betty dashes after it, prompting Bernard to swerve out of control and tumble into the midst of the crowd. It is the beginning of a recurring motif of the family blundering into the midst of events where they do not rightly belong.

After he picks himself up and apologizes to Abbott, the good-natured foreigner that he plowed into, Bernard returns to the lodge with Lawrence and Betty. He tells them that he is leaving on the following day. At the lodge, they find Lawrence’s wife Jill, a sharpshooter, engaged in a shooting match with Ramon, another guest. Betty, ignoring the need for silence, runs up to her mother to ask her a question. Jill gives her a small lapel pin and tells her to step back and be quiet.

Each shooter has one remaining shot, but Jill spoils her mother’s aim by making noise. In actuality, the noise is Abbott’s fault. He shows her his gently-chiming Swiss watch at the crucial moment. The noise made by the watch is immediately associated with this character, who will later be revealed as the villain. It is quite possible that Hitch intended the sound association as a sly reference to Lorre’s character in M, whose presence was announced throughout the film by his continuous whistling of a particular tune. In any case, Jill is upset, particularly when Ramon hits his target, although both are good sports and express a desire to have a rematch someday. Jill cheers up when she sees Bernard. She makes a great show of preferring him to her husband, who makes a great show of being broken-hearted, and they all trot laughingly inside.

That night, Jill dances with Bernard and taunts her husband further as he sits at the table with Betty. Jill’s unfinished knitting project lies on the table, and Lawrence mischievously attaches the end of the yarn to the back of Bernard’s jacket. As the couple dances away from the table, the knitting unravels, stretching the yarn across the room after them. Although the situation is humorous, it is also full of symbolic portent. As though it is the thread of Bernard’s life, the line wraps itself around Jill, sucking her into whatever he is involved in. Just as they notice the attached yarn, a small hole appears in the window near where they are dancing, and Bernard looks down at his chest, where a pool of blood is forming. He has been shot, and the thread of his life has been cut.

As he fades away, Bernard hands Jill a key and tells Jill to go to his room and retrieve the message from “the brush.” Lawrence sends Betty to bed and, after hearing from Jill, heads to Bernard’s room. As the hotel staff closes in, he digs through a variety of brushes until he finally discovers that the shaving brush unscrews. Inside is a dated message that reads simply, “Wapping, G. Barbor make contact A. Hall.” He leaves the room by the other door just as the staff bursts in, and promptly runs into Ramon in the hallway, thus revealing that he already “knows too much.”

The upshot of all this is that, while Jill is being interrogated by the police and Lawrence is attempting to ascertain the whereabouts of the British consul, Ramon kidnaps Betty. He leaves behind a note for her parents at the hotel, warning them to say nothing of what they know if they ever want to see their daughter again. Lawrence bursts in on Jill’s interrogation, shows her the note, then quickly crumples it up and throws it into the fire before anyone else can see it. The scene cuts to a close-up shot of Betty’s lapel pin, given to her earlier by her mother, before zooming out to show her being whisked away into the night aboard a jingling sleigh driven by Ramon.

A fadeout transitions us from the natural beauty of the snow-covered alps to the man-made neon chaos of Piccadilly Circus. Lawrence and Jill have returned to England, and continue to say nothing about events in Switzerland. They are visited at home by a few men from the police. Lawrence fields their probing questions while Jill paces nervously in Betty’s playroom upstairs. Keeping her company is Clive (Hugh Wakefield), whose precise relationship to the family is never revealed. He is either a close family friend or, more likely, Betty’s uncle. His role in the story is that of moderately-useful comic relief. In an amusing visual nod to Hitchcock’s previous film, Clive is playing with a model train.

Finally, the policeman leaves, but one of the men with him stays behind. This fellow, Gibson (George Curzon), has a much higher position in government, and when Jill comes downstairs he pressures both parents to tell the truth for the good of their country. They refuse to cooperate for fear of reprisal, but Gibson is still there when Betty’s kidnappers call to make sure her parents are keeping their mouths shut. As soon as they hang up, Gibson immediately has the call traced and discovers that it originated in Wapping. Lawrence immediately remembers the note, but says nothing as Gibson orders plain-clothes detectives out in force, then leaves.

Certain that the presence of the detectives in Wapping will make the kidnappers believe they have been ratted out, Lawrence and Clive go to Wapping themselves, hoping to find Betty before anything terrible can happen. From here, the characters begin a mad dash from set piece to set piece right up to the tense climax. Each new misadventure manages to walk a surreal balance between the farcical and the darkly sinister.

Soon after arriving in Wapping, Clive and Lawrence find the offices of a dentist named George Barbor (another name from the note). Hung above the door is perhaps the most frightening pair of over-sized dentures ever captured on film, and surely only a British dentist would advertise using a set of teeth that have such a monstrous overbite. In any case, the two step inside and walk up the dingy, narrow staircase leading to the offices above. Lawrence sends Clive in to gave his “toothache” attended to by Dr. Barbor (whose grim demeanor, hooked nose and thick glasses are as unsettling as one might expect) while he searches the waiting room for clues.

As he searches, a frightful yowl emerges from the other room, startling Lawrence into whipping a small revolver out of his coat pocket before he recognizes it as a noise one might expect to hear at the dentist’s. Soon, Clive emerges once more, nursing a sore jaw. Lawrence, having discovered nothing, also claims a toothache and proceeds into the inner room.

The ensuing scene (which was originally intended to take place in a barber shop, until Hitchcock saw a scene just like it in I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang) is a spine-tingling example of sustained suspense. Barbor gets Lawrence into the chair and peers into his mouth. The camera gives us an uncomfortable close-up of a tray full of the wicked-looking implements of dentistry as Barbor’s hand slides across them in search of just the right one. Just as he is about to begin poking around inside, someone comes in and Lawrence recognizes the distinctive chime of a certain Swiss watch. It is Abbott, who asks if someone has arrived before wandering into the next room.

The dentist begins to question Lawrence, who is pretending to be fresh off a ship. Unfortunately for Lawrence, Barbor is very knowledgeable about crews and shipping schedules, and very suspicious. He catches Lawrence in a few lies as he probes his mouth with a sharp tool. Finally, Barbor proclaims that Lawrence’s teeth are quite healthy, and he is just about to get out of the chair when the dentist claims to spot a tooth that “had better come out.” He forces Lawrence back into the chair and tries to gas him, but Lawrence reaches out and begins to strangle him. He wrestles the dentist around into the chair and knocks him out with his own gas instead.

Hearing someone coming up the stairs, Lawrence quickly puts on the unconscious dentist’s coat and glasses and aims the bright light at the door. Just as he bends over his “patient,” Ramon walks in the door. “Has he come?” he asks, and Lawrence points to the door Abbott just walked through. Just then, Abbott comes out and the two have a brief discussion, wherein they hint that they are going to the place where Betty is hidden.

As soon as they mention his daughter, Lawrence, startled, drops something on the floor, but the other two don’t seem to notice. Once they are gone, Lawrence strips off the white coat and glasses, pausing to gas the stirring dentist one last time, then dashes out to collect Clive.

The two follow Ramon and Abbott at a safe distance until they duck into “The Tabernacle of the Sun.” Lawrence notices the symbol of the rising sun over the door, and remembers seeing the same symbol at the top of the message from Bernard’s shaving brush. Stepping inside, they find the worship service of some sort of sun cult already underway, and slip into seats in the back corner of the room. The congregation is singing a hymn, which they obviously don’t know the words to. However, Lawrence, spotting a woman across the aisle that he recognizes from Switzerland, sings this information to Clive in tune with the music.

They go back and forth this way for a few seconds, then find that the woman, who has obviously spotted them, is headed for the front of the room, where she takes the podium. The woman addresses the congregation, using terminology like “the fourth circle” and “the seventh gold ray.” After a moment, she singles out Clive for something and asks him to come forward, where she sits him in a chair in front of the podium. Sitting across from him, she proceeds to hypnotize him, putting him deep into a trance. She then asks that everyone leave who is “not of the fourth circle.” Conveniently, this seems to apply to everyone in the room that isn’t working for Abbott.

As Lawrence gets up to step out, a woman named Mrs. Sprocket and encourages him, at gunpoint, to stay behind. Incidentally, Mrs. Sprocket is played by an actress named Clare Greet, who had been doing bit parts in his films for years: the creepy fortune teller in The Ring (uncredited), Kate’s mother in The Manxman, and one of the three female jury members in Murder!. This was her largest and most memorable role to date.

Abbott appears, offers him a cigarette, and reminds Mrs. Sprocket to collect Lawrence’s gun (his “offering”), while revealing that he knew Lawrence had switched places with the dentist. Lawrence cleverly tricks Mrs. Sprocket into revealing that his daughter is somewhere on the premises, then smashes Ramon’s gun out of his hand as he tries to get past. There are several enemies present, but they are afraid to draw the police if they shoot. Instead, a somewhat quieter battle ensues, as Lawrence and the other men throw chairs at each other. Mrs. Sprocket ascends to the organ to drown out the ruckus, and the whole scene takes on a very comical sense of menace. The situation is just so absurd.

Shouting for Clive to wake up, Lawrence finally bounces a chair off of him, bringing him to his senses. Just then, Ramon sneaks around behind him and they begin to grapple. Spotting a ticket in his pocket for a concert at Albert Hall, Lawrence remembers the “A. Hall” of the secret message, and shouts to Clive to phone Jill and tell her to go there. With Lawrence covering his escape, Clive makes it out through the window just as the other man is finally subdued. Abbott, clearly annoyed, instructs an underling to call Jill and warn her that her daughter will be killed if she goes to Albert Hall. Meanwhile, Lawrence is muscled upstairs. Clive’s call to Jill gets through first, and by the time the other call arrives, she is already gone.

Shortly thereafter, Clive arrives with the police, but he is no match for Abbott, and is soon hauled away for “disorderly behavior in a sacred edifice.” He won’t be back. While they wait for the concert to begin, Lawrence and Betty are finally reunited, and Abbott shows Ramon the exact moment in the program when the noise of the music will mask his shot. Abbott slyly remarks, “I think the composer would have appreciated that.” His observation is quite correct, as Hitchcock had the piece (entitled “Storm Clouds”) specially composed for the film by Arthur Benjamin.

Ramon arrives at the Albert Hall and finds Jill already there. She spots him, too, but is not sure what to do. She takes a seat inside at ground level and looks carefully about as the music begins. The scene is magnificently suspenseful, as we are unsure at what point the assassin will be able to fire. It could be 10 minutes or 30 seconds. As the cantata slowly builds, Hitchcock gradually speeds up the cutting of the camera to match building tension. In addition to jumping all over the auditorium, he cuts back a few times to the spies, listening to the program on the radio.

As the percussionist pulls out the giant cymbal that will mask the sound of the shot, the barrel of the gun quietly emerges from behind the curtain of a balcony box and takes aim at the foreign dignitary in another portion of the balcony. Just as the crucial crescendo comes, Jill makes the connection and leaps to her feet with a scream. It is unclear for some minutes more whether the attempt has been successful. In the meantime, Ramon dashes out the front doors and takes off in a cab, unaware that Jill has pointed him out to the authorities, who give chase.

Ramon returns to the hideout just before the report comes in on the radio that the target has survived the assassination attempt. Ramon blames the noise of the scream, but is certain that no one saw him leave. Abbott, checking the window, immediately spots a few plain-clothes detectives lurking in a doorway. The spies switch off lights and prepare for a siege. Meanwhile, around the corner, a large force of policemen and an even larger crowd has gathered. One of the men is sent out to get the door open, but he is shot dead in the street.

The large-scale gun battle that follows is based on an actual event known as the “Sydney Street Siege.” In 1910, a group of anarchists were holed up in a house, and the army (directed by then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill) had to be called in when the police were unable to handle the situation. In the movie, rifles are distributed to the policeman and they take up position in various houses up and down the street. The spies are slowly overwhelmed by the superior force, dropping one by one as a force of policeman start attempting to break into the tabernacle. The bar-like shadows cast by the window frame emphasizes the trapped and hopeless nature of their situation.

In the confusion, Lawrence sneaks out of the room he is in, past the open doorway of the room where Abbott is reloading his gun, and gets over to where Betty is being held just in time to escape the notice of the woman coming back with more ammunition. A few seconds after she re-enters the room, she is shot, a loss which Abbott obviously feels very keenly. Eventually, only he and Ramon are left. Ramon goes to get Betty so he can use her as a hostage to escape, while Abbot remains at the window.

Ramon comes out into the stairwell just in time to see Lawrence helping Betty up onto the roof. He shoots, and Lawrence drops through the banister and collapses on the next level down, wounded but not dead. Ramon chases Betty out along the edge of the sloped roof and into full view of the crowd below. As they edge slowly out, three or four stories in the air, the police sharpshooter attempts to take aim, but won’t fire for fear of hitting the girl. Instead, Jill takes the gun from him and fires, plugging Ramon squarely. He topples over the edge, leaving Betty relatively safe.

The police finally manage to burst inside and rush up to tend to Lawrence, help Betty off the roof, and smoke out any remaining baddies. Abbott, the only one left, is hiding behind a door, but his chiming watch gives him away and the police fire through the door, killing him. Meanwhile, a traumatized Betty is delivered back into the hands of her waiting parents at last.

The Man Who Knew Too Much takes a little while to really get going, but once it does it never lets up. There is an excellent progression and symmetry to the development of the film, as it moves gradually from the open, outdoor expanse of the Alps, into the district of Wapping, to Albert Hall (a crackerjack scene, as good as anything Hitchcock ever did) and finally into a stifling gun battle in the midst of a tight, claustrophobic warren of adjacent buildings.

The early shooting match between the mother and the assassin has its mirror image in the climax. What was initially a friendly competition of firing at clay pigeons becomes much more sinister and deadly. Just as Jill’s daughter disrupted her shot, Jill’s scream disrupts Ramon’s shot. And, with everything on the line, she claims victory by killing him with her child at stake. The visual imagery of the beginning and end are symmetrical as well, moving from the ski slope to the slope of the steep rooftop.

After a few false starts (most notably The Lodger and Blackmail), Hitchcock had definitively arrived as a director of thrilling suspense films. The Man Who Knew Too Much was both critically-acclaimed and wildly successful. However, the film almost didn’t see the light of day. C.M. Woolf, the wet blanket who had tried to bury Hitchcock’s first three films during the mid-1920s (before they were rescued and released by Balcon), was still a major force at the studio. He was the man in charge when Balcon was away, and when Hitch finished The Man Who Knew Too Much, it happened to be one of those times.

Woolf screened the movie and was appalled, calling in another director to shoot and insert new scenes. He also asked to see the script for Hitch’s next film, The 39 Steps, and declared it to be just as bad. Instead, he assigned Hitch to make a musical biopic, such as Waltzes from Vienna had been. The director was beside himself for days, frantically sending telegrams in an effort to reach Balcon.

Meanwhile, Ivor Montagu, the film’s associate producer and a Hitchcock collaborator from the silent days, convinced Woolf that Balcon would be most displeased if he didn’t give The Man Who Knew Too Much a theatrical run. Woolf grumbled and reluctantly gave the movie a spot as the second-half of a double bill. It was, of course, a hit, much to Woolf’s disgust.

Unfortunately for Hitchcock, most of the film’s revenue went to whatever was playing on the first half of the bill. Nevertheless, his work was a recognizable success and Balcon, when he was finally reached, overruled Woolf definitively. He put Hitchcock back to work on The 39 Steps and promised that, as long as he (Balcon) was in charge, Hitch would not be bothered again.

Next Week: Hitchcock cements his reputation

Posted in Hitchcock, Scholarship

“Sausage. That’s what I ‘it ‘im on the ‘ead with.”
“Ya don’t have to do nothin’ in this ‘ere house – ya stand still and things happen!”
“I’ll remember that, guv’nor. Give you a job in the cabinet, next election . . . In the Messin’ About department.”
“Blimey, if I could blow like that, I’d blow the lot of you to Jericho, blast me if I wouldn’t!”
“Posh. His reputation’s probably grossly exaggerated.”
“It’s like the pictures, isn’t it?”
“Will you see me safely home, guv’nor, if I gives you a nice wedding present, eh?”

–Number Seventeen

Hitchcock actually filmed Number Seventeen before beginning work on Rich and Strange in 1931, but it was not released until the following year. For the fourth time in a row, Hitchcock found himself making a movie out of a successful stage play. This one was written by J. Jefferson Farjeon, and adapted by Hitchcock, Alma, and Rodney Ackland. The play is ostensibly a cheap thriller surrounding a group of odd characters who all find themselves in a deserted house late at night because of a stolen diamond necklace.

The material, as presented by Hitchcock, is often so broadly farcical and far-fetched that it all but refuses to be taken seriously. In fact, Hitchcock had wanted to make a completely different film, while fellow director Thomas Bentley wanted to make this one. However, Walter Mycroft assigned each of them to the project that the other wanted. Hitchcock, having already decided that his source material was hopelessly cliché, determined to film the play, according to co-writer Ackland, as “a burlesque of all the thrillers of which it was a pretty good sample – and do it so subtly that nobody at [the studio] would realize the subject was being guyed.”

He certainly succeeded in doing that, although his elaborate practical joke effectively torpedoed any chance the production might have had to amount to anything (and, at a mercifully short 63 minutes, there’s not much time for development either). The situation is patently absurd throughout, loaded with more plot holes than a gopher colony, and the result is far more reminiscent of an Alec Guinness Ealing comedy than a Hitchcock thriller.

However, be that as it may, Number Seventeen contains the first true example of Hitchcock’s use of a MacGuffin. “MacGuffin” (sometimes “McGuffin”) is a term popularized by Hitchcock as early as the late-1930s which describes a plot device that motivates characters and drives the forward, but is ultimately quite unimportant to the story itself. Hitchcock frequently made use of MacGuffins in his films, which might be anything at all: a person, an object, the answer to a question, etc. The MacGuffin in Number Seventeen is the diamond necklace which everyone wants to get their hands on, although ultimately nothing is revealed about its origins.

In describing the origins of the term, Hitch cited an anecdote about two men on a train. One asks the other about a package in the luggage rack, and the other tells him that it is a MacGuffin, which he goes on to explain is “an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.” When the first man protests that there aren’t any lions in the Scottish Highlands, the other snippily replies, “Well, then that’s no MacGuffin!”

The lone cast member to make the transition from stage to screen was Leon M. Lion, whom Hitchcock despised. As both producer of the play and original creator of the plucky comic relief, however, his involvement was non-negotiable. Lion’s character, a Cockney rascal named Ben, is ironically the best thing about the film, as he is the only one not playing things straight. Most of the best dialogue and all of the laughs belong to him. Other cast members included John Stuart ( who had played Hugh Fielding, the sympathetic young man in Hitchcock’s very first film, The Pleasure Garden) as the leading man, and Hitchcock sound-picture regular Donald Calthrop (Blackmail, Murder!).

The film opens on a deserted street late one night as the camera tracks a man’s hat being blown along a sidewalk until it comes to a stop just inside the gate of number seventeen. The owner of the hat appears and retrieves it from the ground, replacing it on his head before peering up curiously at the house. He immediately notices two things: first, that the house is for sale and second, that there is someone wandering around in one of the upper stories.

The man walks slowly forward to the door, with the camera following just behind, and steps inside. The house is definitely deserted, with not a stick of furniture in sight. The entryway is dominated by a large spiral staircase that disappears into the darkness above. As he steps towards the stairs, a black cat descends to meet him and he finds a box of matches in his pocket, lighting one so that he can see where he is going.

As he makes his way carefully up, another man holding a lit candle peers down from above, but apparently doesn’t see him coming up, wandering off into a side room. As the first man continues to ascend, Hitchcock treats us to all sorts of weird shadows created by the odd shape of the staircase and the faint sources of light. Everything in the house seems to be coated with a thick layer of cobwebs and dust, and the banister is broken in several places. Hitchcock makes great use of this staircase throughout the film, having already shown an aptitude for filming scenes in stairwells in earlier films like Blackmail and The Lodger.

Reaching the top floor, the first man walks into one of the other rooms. Just then, the second man comes out of the room he was in and stands looking around on the landing. When the first man re-emerges, the second starts and drops his candle, which goes out. Just then, a train passes by just outside, and the light it throws into the room illuminates the corpse of a third man lying on his face between the first two. The second man lets out a yell, which is drowned out by the noise of the train, and bolts. The first gives chase and brings him down before he can get far.

Up to this point, about five minutes in, there hasn’t been a single bit of dialogue, the stage having been set by the faux-creepy ambiance of the deserted house and a thick layer of melodramatic mood music. Now, at last, the characters begin speaking to each other. Eventually, the first man will introduce himself as Thorndike, while the second reveals himself to be Ben. (“Ben what?” “Well, if it wasn’t for you, guv’nor, it’d be Ben Bolt.”) Most of the characters remain nameless for long periods of time, but I’ll be introducing them as quickly as possible to avoid “first man,” “third man,” “seventeenth man” and that sort of thing.

Thorndike, for no more apparent reason than the burning curiosity that led him to enter an abandoned house at nearly midnight in the first place, takes it upon himself to interrogate Ben about the body at the top of the stairs. Ben claims to be just as much in the dark as Thorndike is (and quite reluctant to investigate further), but Thorndike forces him to return to the scene of the crime anyway.

Over the course of the next half-hour, a host of characters assembles. First, there’s the girl from next-door, Rose Ackroyd, who crashes through a skylight as she wanders the rooftops looking for her father. She has a telegram for him, and was worried when she couldn’t find him to hand it over. The telegram is from someone named Barton, who advises Ackroyd to watch number seventeen in anticipation of his arrival, as he expects someone named Sheldrake to stop off there with the “Suffolk necklace” before making his getaway later that night.

Just as they are trying to decide what to do, the bell rings to announce the arrival of more characters. Thorndike goes down to answer the door and finds a shady-looking couple named Brant and Nora. Brant claims to be interested in buying the house, despite the lateness of the hour (as the camera zooms in slowly for an ominous close-up of his face). Nora is a deaf/mute. As they step inside, another man, Henry Doyle, walks up and asks if he can come in, too. He calls Brant his uncle, and though it is plain that the other doesn’t recognize him, he doesn’t say anything.

Meanwhile, back upstairs, Rose and Ben discover that the corpse has mysteriously disappeared. Thoroughly spooked, Ben is ready to leave, and when the others come up from below, he pulls a gun he found earlier. As he tries to push his way down the stairs, Doyle grabs at him from behind and they struggle. The gun accidentally goes off, and Thorndike instinctively throws his arm out to protect Nora, saving her life when he takes the bullet in his wrist.

As Nora helps him bind the wound, the newcomers draw a gun of their own and quickly take charge of the situation. They search the others and find the telegram. When Ben tries to escape again, Brant and Doyle wrestle him into the bathroom and lock him up. Unbeknown to all of them, however, the bathroom is not unoccupied. A pair of thick, meaty hands appear from behind Ben and strangle him until he collapses to the floor. However, he is not dead, or even unconscious. He is merely pretending. As he watches carefully from the floor, the other man climbs onto the toilet and fishes the necklace in question out of the tank. When the man, presumably Sheldrake, climbs down and peers through the keyhole, Ben surreptitiously slips the necklace out of his pocket and stows it away.

Meanwhile, Brant and Doyle are discussing their situation on the landing. Apparently they’ve heard of Sheldrake and his necklace, but how they came to be at the house remains a murky subject. In any case, now that they know they determine to stick around and receive a cut of the spoils. After a few moments, the front door opens again and someone comes up the stairs. It is a man with a gash in his forehead; the very man, in fact, who formerly seemed to be a corpse on the floor, and he says that he is Sheldrake.

At Brant’s suggestion, he and Sheldrake tie Rose and Thorndike to the banister, but as Sheldrake ties Rose up, the two trade winks. Next, Sheldrake ushers the other three to a side room to retrieve the diamond, but quickly slams the door on them and locks it once they’ve gone through. It seems that he isn’t Sheldrake, after all, but Mr. Ackroyd, Rose’s father.

Ackroyd has a bit of trouble undoing Brant’s knots, and Rose suggests that he retrieve Ben from the bathroom first. Of course, he finds the real Sheldrake waiting inside, and the two struggle furiously while Rose and Thorndike watch helplessly from the banister. After a few moments, Ben comes out and tries to land a hit with a piece of wood he’s picked up, but he hits Ackroyd by mistake. Sheldrake gets Ackroyd and Ben back into the bathroom and locks the door and releases the other criminals. The four of them turn to leave, and Nora drops her handbag on the ground next to the prisoners. Doyle notices, but says nothing. As the three men turn the corner, Nora, the supposed deaf/mute, tells the prisoners, “I’m coming back.”

Before she returns, though, the rotting banister gives way, leaving Rose and Thorndike dangling by their wrists two or three stories above the ground. Nora arrives just in time to free them before the banister drops to the ground below. Thorndike asks her what she’s doing with the criminals, but her only explanation is, “You don’t think I want to be, do you?” She takes off to rejoin the others, while the freed prisoners rush to release the two locked in the bathroom.

Rose stays to tend to her father while the other two men rush down to the cellar to intercept the crooks. They arrive just in time to overhear the escape plan. Just outside the house is a train-yard, and the thieves plan to board an empty train car, which will then be loaded directly onto a ferry and taken across the Channel to France, where they will be Scot-free.

Nora doesn’t want to go, but the others force her. They get out just as Thorndike and Ben break through the door. Thorndike refuses to go to the police for fear Nora will be arrested if they get involved, and decides to handle things himself. They rush outside and locate the criminals just as the train begins to pull out. Ben manages to get aboard, but Thorndike is left behind.

The three criminals realize that the guard on the train has spotted them, and they leave to take care of him. Ben has landed in a car full of wine and is gleefully getting drunk while he plays with the diamond necklace, which he still has. Meanwhile, back at the depot, Thorndike is trying to figure out what to do. He runs out into the street and commandeers a bus, forcing the driver to follow the route of the train at gunpoint.

On the train, the three criminals have discovered that the necklace is missing, and they all suspect each other. There is a great deal of running back and forth, up and down the speeding train. Doyle, it turns out, is Detective Barton, and he manages to evade the others and slip back to the car where Nora is waiting. Ben is already there, and as Barton begins to frisk Nora, who he suspects of having the necklace, Ben produces it for him. Unfortunately, just as he pulls it out, the other criminals poke their heads in. The necklace drops into the straw in the ensuing scuffle, and Barton makes a break for the front of the train, with the others in hot pursuit.

On the way forward, he gives them the slip again, but they continue on and take out the engineer and the fireman, discovering too late that they have no idea how to bring the train to a stop once it reaches the ferry. Barton, meanwhile, has returned to search for the necklace in the straw. As the train speeds out of control, Hitchcock brings his monumental piece de resistance into play. Since all thrillers end with a chase, his would be the greatest chase of all time: a mad race for the coast between a train and a bus.

While there are some actual shots of trains and buses edited in here and there, the bulk of the climax was shot using models (which are quite clearly just that and nothing more). Nevertheless, the scene is quite elaborate, as the bus squeals around hairpin turns and under (model) bridges while the train flies over them, faster and faster all the time. On the final approach to the (model) ferry, the two speed along, side-by-side, past (model) villages and other scenery.

At last, the train, with Sheldrake and Brant still watching helplessly from the locomotive, plows onto the ferry. The force of the collision snaps the ropes mooring the ferry to the dock and shoves it away from the dock, dragging the train cars that are not already on board out over the water. The noise is terrific, and it’s all quite a spectacle, though clearly it is nothing more than a spectacle that has been built to scale.

As some of the cars begin to sink, Thorndike, dashing up to the water’s edge, spots Nora inside one of them, handcuffed and hanging on as best she can. He strips off his coat and dives into the water to rescue her. Much to the delight of the gathering crowd, he swims inside the sinking train car and drags her out before it sinks. Ben, not handcuffed but apparently not much of a swimmer either, is left to fend for himself, comically clinging to the outside of another car.

In the final scene, Ben, Thorndike, Barton and Nora are gathered indoors, bundled up in blankets for the final denouement. Barton tells Thorndike who he is, and lets him know that he hasn’t got the necklace yet, but he has got the girl, which amounts to the same thing. Nora, knowing she doesn’t have it, but certain she’ll be off to jail soon, remains stoic. However, there’s one thing that Barton, and to a greater extent, the audience, hasn’t counted on. Barton isn’t Barton at all, he is notorious criminal Henry Doyle, whom the police are just as anxious to capture as they are to retrieve the necklace. Thorndike was the real Barton all along, and he delivers Doyle into the waiting arms of the police outside.

Barton, the real one, then goes over to Nora and tells her, “You’d better come along with me.” “Where?” she asks, expecting him to answer “The police station.” Instead he says, “To get some breakfast,” and they share a good laugh. All seems well, but where is the necklace? Not to worry, Ben is wearing it around his neck, as he gladly reveals in exchange for breakfast.

Audiences didn’t understand what Hitchcock had been trying to do with his satirical take on the film anymore than the studio did. Number Seventeen and Rich and Strange were the beginning of the end of his association with British International Pictures, which was continuing to shy away from risk in favor of reliable adaptations and cheaply-produced “quota pictures.”

Later in 1932, Hitch supervised one of these, Lord Camber’s Ladies, which he only produced. About the film, he later said, “This was a poison thing. I gave it to Benn Levy to direct.” The movie did poorly, and Hitchcock, his standing at the studio already tenuous, was terminated. Disgruntled and out of a job, Hitch began to feel the lure of Hollywood, and he was briefly courted by Universal. With the Great Depression going on in America, however, the deal ultimately fell through.

Alfred Hitchcock was the most famous director in Britain, but he was also unemployed after a particularly poor run of early talkies, and had yet to establish his famous niche. The future of his film career looked bleak. However, his greatest opportunity yet, in the form of an old friend and an abandoned script, was waiting just around the corner.

Next Week: Hitchcock arrives at last

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