Adapted from the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, itself inspired by the Jack the Ripper killings of 1888, Alfred Hitchcock’s third feature film centers on a serial killer known as the Avenger who is terrorizing the young blonde women of London every Tuesday evening. Successful composer turned actor Ivor Novello plays the titular lodger, who moves into an upstairs apartment being rented by Mr. and Mrs. Bunting. His secretive nature, combined with his request that the portraits of blonde women decorating his room all be immediately removed, make the Buntings suspicious of him, considering the murders that have been occurring nearby.
What is most remarkable about The Lodger is Hitchcock’s ability to create tension in a silent film by conveying sound, even though we can’t hear it ourselves. Characters are constantly listening out for one another in the building, awaiting footsteps or a key being turned in a door. In an ingenious early scene, the family sits in the downstairs parlor but can hear the lodger’s heavy footsteps above them. The ceiling fades away, and we can see the man’s feet walking on a transparent floor. Hitchcock shot Novello from below walking on a pane of thick glass and then double exposed it into his shot of the ceiling, a brief yet complex moment that changes our sensory connection to what is happening on screen.
There is a clear German influence on The Lodger, which can perhaps be traced to time the director spent in Berlin a few years prior via a co-production deal Gainsborough Pictured arranged with Studio Babelsberg. (Hitch has been quoted as saying, “Everything I had to know about filmmaking I learned in Babelsberg.”) Unorthodox angles and harsh shadows create an unsettling mood while also drawing further attention to the film’s central mystery; a notable shot is a window grille casting a cross-shaped pattern directly onto Novello’s face in close up. Does the religious emblem demonstrate his innocence or his being held in judgment by God?
The Lodger screens tonight, January 17, and Wednesday, January 19, at the Lower Manhattan Alamo Drafthouse. It's also streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.
