The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog Reviews

One of the better films from Hitchcocks silent-era. It has very moody photography and some clever visual touches, but Ivor Novello was not actually that good actor and Hitchcock was only getting started as a director.

Now we're cookin'. This is very early Hitchock, like I think one of his first five films. But even though it wasn't his very first, it was the first he really considered his own, and it set the standard for the bulk of his career over the course of the next several decades, by introducing a lot of Hitch hallmarks including his cameo, the "wrong man" theme, visual innovations and stylishness, etc.

The story concerns a woman who fears that the latest tenant to take up residence at her boarding house is a Jack the Ripper style murderer known as The Avenger whose been on a recent murder spree across London. Looking back, the story is nothing new or revelatory, and it may not have even been so then, but it's a good yarn, and lots of fun.

The film's got a great sense of mood, tone, and atmosphere, complete with lots of fog and some really fitting music. There's some excellent cinematography here, with some neat angles and great lighting. There's some really good art direction as well. The performances are pretty decent, and get the job done, though I don't think they're really brilliant or anything.

Overall, this is definitely a must see for Hitchcock fans and general cinema lovers alike. It hasn't really aged that great, but it's still a good piece of work.

I'm starting to think that Hitchcock was better suited for a career of silent films. With no dialogue spoken, Hitch weaves an intricate tale of murder, mass hysteria, jealousy, and the fear that grips the soul that turns man against man. Without the aid of future technology, Hitchcock finds fascinating ways to play with the audience. Whether it be having Ivor Novello walk on a piece of glass, giving the illusion that we are watching him walk on the ceiling above, or really emphasizing every time the lodger picks up a potentially lethal device, a trick used over and over again throughout the ages, this film is very well done. On top of this, Mr. Novello gives quite an unforgettable performance. Brooding, menacing, but with a sweetness underneath it all. It is a fine line, but he walks it masterfully.
While not one that you are sure to watch over and over again, it would be a great pick for a friend who gets turned off by "silent pictures." It moves at the pace of its contemporaries and is far better than what passes for most "thrillers" nowadays.

ivor novello was a bit hammy but he compensated by turning up later as a character in gosford park :) seriously, the film owes ALOT to the german expressionists and the plot is rather predictable but it is fascinating to see the genesis of hitch's beloved 'wrong man' theme. some creative visual touches too

Alfred Hitchcock considered this film his first movie, ignoring his two previous attempts at direction as he considered them not very well made. The Lodger would represent his true introduction to the film world and the genre that he would define for close to fifty years.



London is in a state of panic as a murderer is killing golden, curly haired women. There is constant agitation and an introduction to the now famed concept of media hysteria. Extra! Extra! Daisy (June) is one of those golden haired females roaming around London. She lives with her parents (Marie Ault and Arthur Chesney) who rent out a room to would be lodgers that are canvassing London. One such lodger (Ivor Novello) moves into the room, acting oddly much to the suspicion of Daisy's would be boy friend Joe (Malcolm Keen), who happens to be the detective investigating the murder case.


Being a silent film, The Lodger uses faces to convey more of the plot than dialogue. This was typical before talkies. What Hitchcock does with The Lodger goes beyond what was typical for films in the later 1920's. He creates an atmosphere that is almost a character itself. Light and shadow dictate what's playing out on screen. He opens the film with the flash of a marquee sign (though we don't know that) saying "To-nite: Golden Curls" almost like an omen on what the killer has a blood lust for.



The Lodger is the first of a long line of masterpieces created by Alfred Hitchcock. This is really where it all began on the silent studios of London, developing into a career rivaled by only a few others. The formula is here in its infant form and even though generations would pass in his career, Hitchcock continued to deliver with the concept over and over again. A silent era gem.

This 1926 early Hitchcock classic, has all the hallmarks of Hitchcock's later classics. And stars the sex-symbol Ivor Novello.

Thematically, it's interesting, but there's not a great deal of mystery or suspense despite the way the plot plays out.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (often referred to as just The Lodger) is a murder mystery of sorts. There is a Jack the Ripper-type murderer in the town who kills blonde women on Tuesday's. At the same time a rather suspicious man rents a room from a family and it appears he is the murderer. The viewers eventually learn he is innocent and his sister was the first murdered girl. My main problem with this film is the identity of the actual killer is never revealed. Similarly, the killer's motive is never revealed. The source material for this film has the lodger being the murderer, but studio executives wouldn't allow this as the actor playing the lodger was quite popular at the time and portraying him as a murderer might harm his reputation. Several later Hitchcock films had similar changes and I think they were detriments in all the films.

While this was actually Hitchcock's third film, he often considered it his first. Hitchcock spent some time before his career as a director working with filmmakers in Germany and it shows in this film. The film is heavily influenced by Expressionistic filmmakers like Murnau and Lang. The film also contains several themes that would recur throughout Hitchcock's career. The film contains a cameo by Hitchcock early on, it depicts an innocent man on the run, and it throws in romance during a murder mystery.

Overall, I didn't find this film particularly enjoyable. It seemed like almost everything that happened until the end of the film was rather pointless. While the ending got a little more exciting, the aforementioned problems don't really help make up for a rather dull film. The film may incorporate quite a few elements of Hitchcock's later work, but this has a long way to go to compare favorably to Hitchcock's better films.

60/100
D-

good & suspenseful about murders... an interesting silent movie with a great twist by Alfred Hitchcock who did a fantastic job...

I don't really like silent films on the whole, and this is known to most people who try to discuss early film with me. It's not a prejudice without precedent for me, in that I've been bored by nearly every silent film I've ever tried to watch. I do know that once upon a time I felt black and white was intolerable (I don't recall this explicitly, but I absolutely believe this was the case, knowing the progression of my tastes and the bemused accusations of my father), and I know that I once decided to watch the 1925 Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera in my youth and it simply couldn't hold my (extremely youthful) attention. It isn't until right now that I realize I was strangely open to the idea of trying a silent film even then, but it occurs to me that is the case. The last silent film I tried to watch (and did, in fact, get all the way through) was Paul Leni's Conrad Veidt-starring Victor Hugo adaptation* from 1928, The Man Who Laughs. This was, though, one of my notoriously obnoxious theatrical (yes, theatrical!) experiences, with an audience of then-fellow college students who could not stop laughing at the idea of a dog named Homo, as if there couldn't be any other meaning--and as if it could somehow continue to be funny after the first time. The film dragged for me, but it was a viewing mixed with increasing frustration and anger at the audience around me, which tends to make me want to leave and write incensed words to vent out the endless frustration (unless, of course, I release it via my occasional loud and profane requests for the audience to please be quiet--in far different terms). I picked up the Alfred Hitchcock Premier Collection, though, which collects many of his MGM-produced (or formerly owned, at least) films, including this one. I've been meaning to give another go to silent film and figured Hitchcock would be a good starting place for it.

The town of London is rocked by a continuing streak of murders on Tuesday nights that all take fair-haired women as their victims, bringing to mind the Whitechapel Murders (a legend about these being what the story was actually based on). A woman witnesses the most recent, telling the police that the man responsible is a tall man with the lower half of his face covered, the only clue to accompany the notes left on the victims: a note with a triangle, in the centre of which is written "The Avenger," giving the murderer his name. The owners of a lodging house, Mrs. Bunting (Marie Ault) and her husband (Arthur Chesney), take in a strange lodger (Ivor Novello) whose face is half-covered, to the amusement of their fair-haired daughter Daisy (June--just June), and the annoyance of the Daisy-courting policeman Joe (Malcolm Keen). Mysterious in all his actions, but suggestive of a role in the murders, the lodger captures the heart of Daisy and the suspicion of the landlady and Joe.

It's hard to look at films that are over eighty years old and make declarations about the things they did that other films didn't, because, of course, I don't know enough about the time period to be nailing down such things. This is, however, recognized as the "first Hitchcock film," despite being the third that he directed, even by Hitchcock himself. There is a hint of his work, or at least his later collaborations with Saul Bass, in a rather smart little opening credit-ish sequence (before there was such a thing in common use, I think I can say confidently) with a radial sweep opening over a static, abstract image to open the film. There are also some very creative touches, from the pacing of the lodger being filmed from below via a plate glass "floor" matched to a chandelier below it, using double exposure as the owning tenants look up and wonder at the pacing that causes the chandelier to shake. As Joe ponders his suspicions of the lodger, he looks at his footprint and across it float more double-exposed images of the clues that suggest his guilt. More subtly, there are clever shots like the image of a hand following a banister down a staircase, without any visual of the person attached to it, which gives a far more potent image to the shot than the simple one of a person walking down them.

There's a clever play on sympathies as the policeman, Joe, is shown to be an egocentric jerk, sure of his position in Daisy's life while ignoring her own feelings, yet giving our suspected murderer an air of sympathy that makes us wonder how on earth he can really be the murderer--even as he hides paintings of golden-haired women from his sight and fawns over Daisy's hair, or brandishes a knife toward her in a suggestive moment. Of course, this has the faint odour of studio interference (which I've since discovered was an accurate impression), in making then-heartthrob Ivor Novello almost contractually sympathetic. Even with this requirement, Hitchcock, consummate professional, takes a route dissimilar to Kubrick's and puts work into establishing the character as just that--sympathetic, rather than taking the twisted method of making him unsympathetic, but perhaps innocent.

As my discussion of sympathy may suggest to anyone paying attention--yes, this film is actually very engaging. I watched it with, I believe, Ashley Irwin's 1999 score that celebrated Hitchcock's (theoretical) hundredth birthday (knowing neither it nor the also-included 1997 Paul Zaza score, I opted to simply play it with whatever the default was), which was quite good and well-scored, with a lovely little musical phrase to accompany the oft-repeated blinking title card that said "To-Night Golden Curls."** Ivor was appreciably handsome, and Joe somewhat unpleasant, but both actors served to enhance these impressions with their performances, Joe playing an early form of the macho braggart and Ivor the quietly lethal but more honest social-inferior. It does incorporate, as was noted by commentators (and obvious in retrospect to me), some themes that Hitchcock would later play with more, such as pursuit of the wrong man (hmm, now why does that phrase sound familiar while discussing Hitchcock? Hmm...) and a fetishistic approach to women--here, of course, blonds.

This is probably not a bad film to start off someone with an open mind to silent films with, as I like to think I could be reasonably considered. It doesn't feel overlong (though I dreaded the idea of a 100 minute silent film at first, I began to worry there was not enough time to wrap up the story toward the end), and is quite nicely paced once the audience catches up to it.

*Yeah, I felt the need to work in all three names. Deal with it.
**Not to be confused with station bumpers you might've seen on NBC in the late 1980s.

What can you say about a silent film, when they were made before acting was invented? I realize it was one of Hitchcock's first movies, but he could take up a lot of film by having the actors stare into the camera with a vacant look (or for the actresses, stare at the ceiling with a dreamy look).
It was interesting to see how Hitchcock was cutting his teeth on the horror genre in some of the scenes. For example, two policemen riding in a car vaguely resembles a skull or an scary face. The "Nutcracker-esque" soundtrack got distracting at times.

The Lodger is universally considered the best of Hitchcock's silents. Even in this early piece we see some of Hitch's trademark theme's, like the possibility of the innocent man accused and some interesting camera shots. It's a story that's loosely based on the Jack the Ripper killings in London. In this movie the serial killer is known as The Avenger and is killing blondes, which has the fair-haired girls of London worried. During this time a mysterious man shows up looking for a room to rent from a family. This lodger has some quirky habits of going out on foggy nights and has them wondering who exactly this lodger that's living in their house really is. I particularly enjoyed the scene where the Lodger is playing chess with Daisy. This movie definitely showcases Hitchcock's early talent for the thriller genre and he keeps you guessing throughout. I have read that Hitchcock wanted a different ending, but that it was shot down by the movie executives. I won't mention the endings to avoid spoiling the movie, but I would have liked to see it Hitch's way. Unfortunately this was long before the days of shooting alternate versions, so we just have to imagine how he would have done it. It's amazing to me to watch Hitchcock's quality movies from the 1920s-1970s. He truly deserves the title, The Master of Suspense. He dedicated his life to the art of filmmaking and we get to reap the benefits.

See the German Concorde DVD - great transfer, properly tinted, and I believe at the right speed (not too fast, as too many silents are shown these days).

I was surprisingly engaged. Ivor Novello is ridiculously over-the-top, but otherwise the film is brilliant.

Early Hitchcock is once again plagued by a poor screenplay. That, however, make the impressive visual work and the building of an intense and suspenseful atmosphere all the more remarkable. It is for that reason, perhaps, that this is widely regarded as Hitchcock's first Hitchcockian film.

Antes que nada, hay que ubicarse que este es un filme de 1927, en plena era del cine mudo. Pero es impresionante el trabajo de dirección de Alfred Hitchcock en este filme que si bien no fué su primer trabajo en la silla del director pero sí­ es considerado su primer gran filme con todos los elementos hitchcockianos, una rubia, un caso de identidad equivocada, gran atmósfera de tensión, la presentación del baño, su cameo personal, etc... Es soberbia como en una época tan limitada para presentar un filme, Hitchcock logra sacar jugo a las herramientas a la mano, así como elegir un tema como el de un homicida en las calles de Londres, en una era del cine donde muchas de las películas eran de temas moderados y para toda la familia. Hitchcock presenta escenas sólidas y atrevidas para la época denotando que era un director diferente. Un excelente ejemplo recomendado para quienes quieren ver un filme de la era del cine mudo.

An early triumph for Hitchcock, this is a film which studies the effect of crime on a social and personal level with a brilliantly created atmosphere of suspicion, danger and uncertainty.

The play of flashes, lights, fog and music blended wonderfully in this thrilling film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The plot's simple enough, but the delivery was brilliant, the acting and direction superb. Great classic movie!

Breath-taking, amazing, simply made with all its beautiful crudeness. The plot's simple, but the direction, the cinematography, the acting... Amazing. I was creeped out, I happily laughed, I nearly shed a tear. I didn't even notice that the hour was up until I looked at the time! Great movie :)