Film Review
The best known and most popular of Hitchcock's silent films is
The Lodger, a skilfully woven
concoction of suspense thriller and romance which presages many of the
director's subsequent great works.
The
39 Steps,
North By Northwest,
Psycho, and many others all have
their roots clearly visible in this groundbreaking masterpiece of early
British cinema. The film was based on the famous novel
The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes,
which was inspired by the Jack the Ripper killings. This novel
has been adapted several times for cinema, one of the best being the
1944 American film of the same title, directed by John Brahm.
Hitchcock liked to describe
The
Lodger as his first film, although he had in fact made a few
others prior to this (none of these had yet been released). It
was made at Islington Studios in London for Michael Balcon's newly
created company Gainsborough Pictures. The film was
initially shelved when its distributor judged that it was too complicated
and arty for a British audience. Producer Michael Balcon hired
film critic Ivor Montagu to try to salvage the film. At Montagu's
suggestion, Hitchcock shot a few extra scenes, removed several
intertitles and tightened the editing to make the narrative easier to
follow. When
The Lodger
was released in February 1927, it was both a critical and commercial
success, prompting Balcon to release Hitchcock's previous two films -
The Pleasure Garden and
The Mountain Eagle - which had also
been held back.
Setting a trend that Hitchcock would adhere to throughout most of his
career, the film's lead part was taken by one of the biggest stars of
the day - in this case Ivor Novello (who was also a renowned singer and
composer, as well as an actor). Hitchcock justified casting
big name actors by saying that this heightened the tension, since the
audience would have greater sympathy for a character who was played by an actor
they knew well. The downside of this is that such actors were
often reluctant to play villainous parts. In
The Lodger, it was originally
intended that the character played by Ivor Novello would not be proven
innocent of the killings. This had to be changed through fears
that Novello's popular matinee idol image would have been destroyed if
he had played the part of a murderer. The same thing
happened several years later with
Suspicion (1941), when RKO
refused to allow Cary Grant to play a character who would be revealed
to be a killer.
Stylistically,
The Lodger is
quite different to most British films of its era and shows the
influence of contemporary German cinema. For his previous two
films, Hitchcock had been based in Munich, and so he would have been
aware of such films as Murnau's
Nosferatu (1922), Robert
Wiene's
Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari
(1920) and Fritz Lang's
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
(1922). The striking visually expressionistic design of these
films can be seen in
The Lodger
- claustrophobic sets, tilted camera angles, harsh lighting,
exaggerated shadows - all working to create a sense of mental
derangement and profound anxiety, suggesting a world tumbling into
paranoia and anarchy, which fits the narrative beautifully.
Even in this first "true Hitchcock" we see glimpses of the director's
genius and flair for innovation - most notably in the arresting shot
where the Buntings "see" their mysterious lodger pacing up and down in
his room through a transparent ceiling. Hitchcock made his first
cameo appearance in this film - playing the part of a newspaper editor,
seated at a desk, with his back to the camera. The story goes
that he was taking the place of a bit part actor who failed to turn up.
Today it is hard not to regard
The
Lodger as the prototype for most of Hitchcock subsequent
films. There is the innocent man who is wrongly suspected of
committing a crime and who faces death unless he can clear his name;
there are beautiful blond women who become the victims of flawed men
who cannot control their primitive urges; there are gruesome murders
and overt eroticism, linked in a grotesque coupling of sex and
death. Those themes that interested and inspired Hitchcock the
most are clearly visible in
The
Lodger, themes that would be explored in greater depth and with
more subtlety in his later films. The dark path that would take
us to the Bates Motel and beyond starts here...
© James Travers 2008
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Alfred Hitchcock film:
The Ring (1927)
Film Synopsis
A killer stalks the foggy streets of London. The victims are all
young women with fair hair, on whose bodies there is a card signed: The
Avenger. A police investigation is underway, but no one yet knows
the identity of the mysterious killer. On the night of the
seventh murder, Mr and Mrs Bunting take in a new lodger, a quiet young
man who values his privacy. The Buntings' daughter, Daisy, takes
a liking to the handsome lodger, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend,
Joe, a policeman who is looking for the elusive serial
killer. One night, the lodger slips furtively out of his
rooms, not knowing that he has been seen by his landlady. Within
a few hours, the Avenger has struck again. When they hear of
this, the Buntings draw the obvious conclusion...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.