The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
(often just called
The Lodger) is a 1927
silent film directed by
Alfred Hitchcock.
It concerns the hunt
for a "Jack the Ripper" type
serial killer in London
. The
wrong man is accused of the crime and is forced to try to prove his
innocence.
Hitchcock once told
François
Truffaut that he considered this his first film, although it
was the third film directed by Hitchcock.
Hitchcock's assistant director
Alma
Reville, would become his wife a few months before the film was
released.
Plot
The film begins with police detectives interviewing a hysterical
woman who was an eyewitness to the seventh murder committed by the
Avenger. "Tall he was—and his face all wrapped up". The news
spreads like wildfire through London.
That night, Daisy Bunting, a blonde model, is at a fashion parade
where she and the other showgirls heard the news of the murder. The
blonde girls are horrified; covering their hair with dark wigs or
hats while Daisy laughs at their fears. She returns home to her
parents, Mr and Mrs Bunting, and her policeman sweetheart, Joe, who
have been reading the details of the latest Avenger crime in the
day's paper.
Later that same night a new tenant arrives at the house of Mr and
Mrs Bunting and inquires about the room they are renting. Mrs
Bunting takes him to the room on the top floor of her house which
is decorated with portraits of beautiful young women, all blondes.
The man is rather reclusive and secretive, which puzzles Mrs
Bunting. However she does not complain after he willingly pays her
a month's rent in advance, and asks only for bread, butter, and a
glass of milk and to be left in peace.
Mrs Bunting leaves her new tenant and tells her husband the good
news, showing him the small fortune she has been paid. Upon
returning with the lodger's meal, she is surprised to find him
turning all the portraits of the women around to face the wall, and
he politely requests that they be removed. Mrs Bunting enlists
Daisy to remove the portraits, and upon first sight an attraction
begins to form between Daisy and the lodger. The women bid him
goodnight and return downstairs, where they hear the lodger's heavy
footsteps as he paces the floor.
Over the course of the following week, the relationship between
Daisy and the reclusive lodger gradually heats up, and Joe, newly
assigned to the Avenger case, begins to resent the closeness
developing between them. The following Tuesday, Mrs Bunting is
awoken late in the night by the lodger leaving the house. She is
suspicious and searches his room in his absence, finding a cupboard
that has been locked tight. In the morning, another blond is found
dead just around the corner from their house.
Joe and his fellow policemen, after weighing the latest clues,
observe that the murders are moving towards the Bunting's
neighborhood. Meanwhile, Mrs Bunting voices her fears to her
husband that the lodger is the Avenger, and the two become fearful
for Daisy's safety, agreeing to prevent her from spending further
time alone with the stranger. Daisy remains oblivious to any
danger, and the next Tuesday night, she and the lodger manages to
sneak away on a late night date. Joe tracks them down, and
confronting them, is told by Daisy that it's over between them. The
heartbroken Joe is left to ponder his fortunes while the lodger and
Daisy head home. As Joe sits, he begins to piece the events of the
previous weeks together and convinces himself that the lodger is
indeed the murdering Avenger.
With a warrant in hand and two fellow officers in tow, Joe returns
to search the lodger's room. In the locked cupboard they find a
leather bag containing a gun, a map plotting the location of the
Avenger's murders, newspapers and a photograph of an attractive
blonde woman. Taking the lodger's emotional reaction as an
admission of guilt, Joe surmises this woman was the Avenger's first
victim. The lodger is arrested despite Daisy's protests, but
manages to escape and runs off into the night. Daisy follows and
finds him, still handcuffed, coatless and shivering in the fog. He
explains that the photograph found in his room was his sister, a
beautiful debutante who was murdered by the Avenger at a dance she
had attended with her brother. He then vowed to his mother on her
deathbed he would not rest until he had brought the killer to
justice.
Daisy brings the lodger to a nearby pub to give him brandy to warm
him, hiding his handcuffs with a cloak. The locals, suspicious of
the pair, pursue them, quickly gathering numbers until they are a
veritable lynch mob. The lodger is surrounded and beaten, while
Daisy and Joe, who has just heard the news from headquarters that
the real Avenger has been caught, try in vain to defend him. When
all looks lost, a paperboy interrupts with the news that the real
Avenger has been arrested. The mob releases the lodger who falls
into Daisy's waiting arms.
Alfred
Hitchcock cameo: Alfred Hitchcock appears sitting at a
desk in the newsroom with his back to the camera (3 minutes into
the film). This is Alfred Hitchcock's first recognizable film cameo
and was to become a standard practice for the remainder of his
films.
Cast
Production
It is based on a novel of the same name by
Marie Belloc Lowndes, and the play
Who Is He?, cowritten by Belloc Lowndes, about the
Jack The Ripper murders.
With the casting of Ivor Novello as the nameless lodger, the studio
demanded alterations to the script.Ultimately, Hitchock decided to
simply avoid showing a villain at all.
Despite all the effort that Hitchcock put into the film, producer
Michael Balcon was furious with the
end result and nearly shelved the film - and Hitchcock's career as
well. After considerable bickering, a compromise was reached and
film critic
Ivor Montagu was hired to
salvage the film. Hitchcock was initially resentful of the
intrusion, but Montagu recognized the director's technical skill
and artistry and made only minor suggestions, mostly concerning the
title cards and the reshooting of a few minor scenes.
The result, described by Hitchcock scholar
Donald Spoto, is "the first time Hitchcock has
revealed his psychological attraction to the association between
sex and murder, between ecstasy and death." It would pave the way
for his later work.
Analysis
Though made in 1926,
The Lodger still resonates with
modern audiences. Ostensibly a murder mystery, the film is as much
about public and media hysteria as about crime–the news reporting
in
The Lodger is certainly not "fair and balanced."
The Lodger introduced themes that would run through much
of Hitchcock’s later work: the innocent man on the run, hunted down
by a self-righteous society, and a fetishistic sexuality. Perhaps
for the first time, a truly cinematic eye was at work in British
cinema. Hitchcock had clearly been watching contemporary films by
Murnau and
Lang, whose influence can be seen in the ominous
camera angles and claustrophobic lighting. While Hitchcock had made
two previous films, in later years the director would refer to
The Lodger as the first true "Hitchcock film"
Soundtrack
In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Hitchcock's birth, a
new orchestral soundtrack was composed by
Ashley Irwin. The composer's recording of the
score with the
Deutsches Filmorchester
Babelsberg was broadcast over the
ARTE TV
network in Europe on
August 13,
1999.
The first
live performance was given on September
29, 2000 in the Nikolaisaal in Potsdam
by the
Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg under the direction of Scott Lawton.
Remakes
The novel was also the basis of four other films:
Listen to
References
- IMDB trivia
- Spoto, Donald pg. 85
- Spoto, Donald pgs. 88-89
- Spoto, Donald pg. 91
- Lodger, The: A Story of the London Fog (1926)
- Spoto, Donald pg. 86
- Richard Allen and Sam Ishii-Gonzales Alfred Hitchcock
Centenary Essays pg. iv
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