11 Harrowhouse

11 Harrowhouse
11 Harrowhouse promotional movie poster
Directed by	Aram Avakian
Written by	Jeffrey Bloom Charles Grodin (adaptation) Gerald A. Browne (novel)
Produced by	Elliott Kastner Denis Holt (associate producer)
Starring	Candice Bergen James Mason Charles Grodin
Cinematography	Arthur Ibbetson
Edited by	Anne V. Coates
Music by	Michael J. Lewis
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date	1974
Running time	94 min
Country	UK
Language	English

11 Harrowhouse is a 1974 film directed by Aram Avakian. It was adapted by Charles Grodin based upon the novel by Gerald A. Browne with the screenplay by Jeffrey Bloom. It stars Charles Grodin, Candice Bergen, James Mason, Trevor Howard and Sir John Gielgud.

Plot Synopsis

Set, in England, this comedic heist film involves a small time diamond merchant who is unexpectedly offered the chance to supervise the purchase and cutting of an extremely large diamond to be named for its wealthy owner. When the diamond is stolen from him, he is blackmailed into pulling off a major heist at ""The System,"" located at 11 Harrowhouse with the help of his beautiful and wealthy girlfriend.

Reviews

Time Magazine reviewed the film positively, and described the cast as ""poised and stylish.""

Relevance

A prominent theme of the film revolves around how the primary world diamond producer controls the price of diamonds by creating artificial scarcity.

Versions

This film has been screened in two versions in the past - both with and without a retrospective commentary from Grodin's character, H.R. Chesser. Only the version without commentary seems to be widely available in published form, and neither version seems to have been screened to great extent on TV, though the original version with commentary holds up very well today. The film was released on LaserDisc by Fox Video in Widescreen Format.