The Lodger (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 3/7/2018

We saw our second film from 1927, Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger, at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring during a silent film festival held there in the fall. It included live accompaniment -- something we hadn't experienced since we saw Speedy at the Winchester Alamo. The movie itself was one of Hitchcock's earliest films, and the first of his we'd seen.

The plot concerns the title character, played by Ivor Novello, taking a room at a boarding house run by the parents of the female lead, played by June Tripp. Her boyfriend is a policeman who is working on the case of a serial killer who is murdering women -- blondes, in fact -- on a periodic basis.

Novello exhibits a variety of strange behavior from the start, and as time goes by more and more evidence begins to link him to the crimes. At the same time he and Tripp become romantically involved. This is all surprisingly effective for most of the movie, and it is unfortunate that the film's major flaw is a disappointingly anti-climatic ending.

As suggested by the description above, many of Hitchcock's tendencies are already in place. At the same time, this film also has some of that odd silent-movie intensity which distinguishes it from most of Hitchcock's later films.

Our next film was seen on the very same night at the same venue: Hitchcock's Blackmail, from 1929. This was our first film from 1929, and obviously our second Hitchcock film. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT