Cereal At Midnight

Following immediately on the heels of 1931's Rich and Strange , Hitchcock's  Number Seventeen (1932) is an altogether different beast than its predecessor. Based on a play (which was based on a book), the story is mostly a comedic mystery that takes place in an empty house. The first half of the movie brings together a group of unidentified characters, who have converged upon the central location of the story for reasons that reveal themselves as the story unfolds. We have an inspector, a jewel thief, a hobo, a deaf mute, a corpse and the corpse's daughter, with performances by John Stuart, Ann Grey, Leon M. Lion, and several other British character actors of the early 1930s. Putting together the who, what, when, where, and why is most of the fun of the film.  The rest of the fun comes during the latter half of the movie, which is essentially one massive chase sequence set on and around a train. Using a series of elaborate miniatures, Hitchcock stages a huge action scene ...

Years before he made box office smashes with A-list talent and became a household name as "the master of suspense," Alfred Hitchcock was a young English director cutting his creative teeth and finding his way in silent film and early talkies.  1931's  Rich and Strange , alternately known in the U.S. as East of Shanghai,  starts as a quirky romantic comedy: Fred (Henry Kendall) and Emily (Joan Berry) are a young married couple who are struggling to make ends meet. Fred is restless and self-pitying, while Emily is practical, optimistic, and madly in love with her husband. When they inherit a large amount of money from a wealthy relative, Fred quits his job and they set sail to see the world on an ocean liner, where their relationship is tested when they both fall for other people. Not content for this to simply be a relationship story, it also becomes a travelogue and a  Titanic- level disaster movie. It's as if Hitchcock had to fill the movie with everything people wa...