Rent The Lodger (1927)

Unwatchable - The Lodger review by JJ

Terrible video quality on the DVD. Frame jumping around like a Unsteadicam wielded by a suffering crackhead. Nasty!

I'll give the Blu-ray a go instead.

Foggy Nights in London Town - The Lodger review by CH

Although silent, The Lodger's opening scream rivals the one which Hitchcock was to bring to Psycho some three decades later. Here was his first foray into murder, which was to be his stock-in-trade.

As so often, he worked from a novel. In this case it was one written by Marie Belloc-Lowndes who published it in 1913. It was set in a boarding house and inspired by Jack the

Ripper. This was recommended by Gertrude Stein to Hemingway as "something that will hold your interest and is marvellous in its own way". He agreed that this and The Chink in thr Armour "were both splendid after-work books, the people credible and the action and the terror never false".

How does this compare with the first of what were to be several film versions of the novel? Hitchcock does not match its continual unease, partly because the eponymous character was played by Ivor Novello, so popular a figure at the time that he could not play a murderer. That said, he exhibits strange behaviour. This includes an attempt to creep into a bathroom where, again an anticipation of Psycho, a young woman stretches beneath the water. All of which arouses the suspicions of her mother, his landlady and a policeman who chances to be smitten with the woman and is also assigned to the case of murders of blonde-haired women whose corpses bear a visiting card with the Avenger's mark upon it.

That said, there are many nascent Hitchcock touches in this expressionist film (and the first of his own appearances). Montage figures throughout, and, in a bold touch, a ceiling turns transparent to reveal the padding feet above. It is subtitled "a story of the London fog", a turn to the weather which is always filmic, as are windows bearing the force of the rain.

It keeps our attention more than it did the splendidly named Mordaunt Hall's. He reviewed it in the New York Times the following year, when it was renamed for that market as Thr Case of Jonathan Drew. It is a droll, bravura article - seek it out - which ends by saying that "all the characters are prone to overact - Mr. Novello especially, he having more opportunity". Curiously, he remarks that the film is fifteen minutes too long. Down the years it has somehow lost its running time and became eighty minutes until its recent restoration by thr British Film Institute to ninety, along with the original tinting. That is not the disc available here, and one might seek that out. As for Mr. Hall, he could have declared an interest: he worked with Hitchcock on the intertitles to films earlier in the decade after returning from Great War naval intelligence work which he was to recall in a memoir which attracted praise. Strange, thr way in which one thing leads to another.

Hitchcock Breakthrough. - The Lodger review by Steve

This is the one that the Master of Suspense liked to think of as the first true Alfred Hitchcock film, though it took a while for him to make good on its promise. This is his strongest candidate for the best British silent, but- Anthony Asquith apart- that's not much of a contest.

An unknown serial killer is murdering blondes in London. Handsome superstar of UK silents, Ivor Novello, plays the jittery innocent man who the police and the public figure for the killer. So, he establishes the Hitchcock archetype of the wrong man who must clear his name. And the focus on blonde victims is unmissable.

It's full of riffs and motifs and that we would see continually over the years (including a cameo from the director). The story is told with great clarity and suspense, with moments of humour. And for the first time, his camera truly comes alive.

Hitch returned from Germany obviously influenced by expressionism. And we see many memorable visual images, like when the family of the landlord are discussing their new tenant, and the ceiling disappears to reveal the agitated lodger pacing in the room above. And there's the first of many thrilling climaxes.