3 out of 5

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Hitchcock’s second available film after The Pleasure Garden – his first went uncompleted, his third, The Mountain Eagle, is lost as of this writing – The Lodger will likely immediately draw to mind a couple of influences from modern viewers: Dracula, and the story of Jack the Ripper. And you’re spot on. The main source material here is a book of the same name by Marie Belloc Lowndes (as well as a co-written play), which was the first fictionalized novel on The Ripper, and, visually, Hitch was fresh off of seeing some German films and going all-in on expressionism. The latter point makes for contextually rich material, and the visuals are leaps and bounds more confident than those in The Pleasure Garden, but standing on the sidelines, it’s a little funny: akin to the clean-cut kid who starts listening to metal over the summer and shows up Sophomore year with black nails and long hair – totally earnest and sincere interest, but a little put-on.

The story basis also provides for one of those ever-present indications of studio fiddling, as the film’s ultimate avoidance of going too creepy with its subject matter – ultimately straying from the book – was apparently due to production pressure making sure that star Ivor Novello, quite a draw at the time, couldn’t be a bad guy. While it’s fair to say that a lot of material from this era is plagued by happy endings, The Lodger’s overall flow feels ultimately hampered by an inability to commit to its story, making its ending feel especially flighty; even though the subject matter is darker than The Pleasure Garden, in comparison, that movie overall has a more acerbic edge.

Some of that – and a lot of my middling rating – also comes from Hitch’s absolute focus on visuals over much else. There are some pretty stunning scenes executed in the movie, especially the crowd scenes, that really land the sense of terror or excitement that’s intended. And structurally, all of the queues the movie takes from Dracula or early Germanic stylization are striking, and effective, with fantastic shadows and framing, and great use of angles and other elements to tell a story. But some of the experimentation – such as the early daisy-chain of communication regarding the murders – is indicative of those formative days of film, when we’re still figuring out how this stuff is done and it doesn’t actually add much to the story; and more directly, the actors feel very floundering in many scenes, as though the emotional spirit of the moment was left up to them while Hitchcock was focusing on getting the closeup to look just right. Again, allowing for the era, when the “language” between stage and silent film acting was being developed, it nonetheless feels especially discordant in a movie where the visuals seem so tightly controlled.

The Lodger concerns the appearance of the titular figure (Novello) at the lodging of the Buntings, right around the time a string of murders of blonde dames starts to kick off in the area. The Buntings daughter, Daisy (June Tripp), happens to be blonde… but she’s under the protection of her boyfriend, Joe (Malcolm Keen), a copper who happens to be assigned to the murders – attributed to “The Avenger.” The Lodger, Jonathan, has a habit of going out late at night and seems to have an aversion to paintings of blonde women, which eventually creeps out Mrs. Bunting (Marie Ault), especially when Daisy takes a liking to Jonathan. Queue a mini love triangle, as well as Joe’s own completely unrelated suspicions of Jonathan, and the Lodger spins up a generally effective murder mystery.

Tripp seems most adapted to screen acting; my criticism of Hitch’s control of the actors may admittedly be unfounded – Tripp’s reaction to her boyfriend’s rather aggressive advances are hard to parse, and it’s unclear if that was just our expectations at that time of on screen chemistry, or actor ambivalence / confusion, or purposeful commentary. But setting that aside, while Novello nails the weird stranger vibes, he’s not quite as mesmerizing as a potential beau, and Keen is the most off, sometimes catching the camera straight on and way overacting, even for a silent film.

But: as a Hitchcock education, it so clearly starts here. While the transition into stylist is humorously abrupt, and from my perspective, the overall immersiveness of the film takes a hit, there are shot setups that still sing, decades on, meaning I can’t even imagine the revelation this must’ve been in 1927.