The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog is a 1927 British silent thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June Tripp, Malcolm Keen and Ivor Novello. Hitchcock's third feature film, it was released on 14 February 1927 in London and on 10 June 1928 in New York City. The film is based on the 1913 novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes and the play Who Is He? co-written by Belloc Lowndes. Its plot concerns the hunt for a Jack the Ripper-like serial killer in London.

Cast

  • Marie Ault as The Landlady (Mrs. Bunting)
  • Arthur Chesney as Her Husband (Mr. Bunting)
  • June Tripp as Daisy Bunting, a Mannequin
  • Malcolm Keen as Joe Chandler
  • Ivor Novello as Jonathan Drew (The Lodger)
  • Eve Gray as Showgirl Victim (uncredited)
  • Alfred Hitchcock as Extra in newspaper office (uncredited)
  • Reginald Gardiner as Dancer at Ball (uncredited)
  • Alma Reville as Woman Listening to Wireless (uncredited)

Alfred Hitchcock's cameo occurs when he is sitting at a desk in the newsroom with his back to the camera and operating a telephone (4:44 minutes into the film). This is Hitchcock's first recognisable film cameo, and it became a standard practice for the remainder of his films. According to some sources, including the French filmmaker François Truffaut, Hitchcock makes another cameo at the very end of the film in the angry mob, but this has been disputed.

Pre-production

The Lodger is based on a novel of the same name by Marie Belloc Lowndes about the Jack the Ripper murders, as well as the play Who Is He?, a comic stage adaptation of the novel by Horace Annesley Vachell that Hitchcock saw in 1915.

<blockquote>They wouldn't let Novello even be considered as a villain. The publicity angle carried the day, and we had to change the script to show that without a doubt he was innocent.</blockquote>

In recollections such as these, Hitchcock presented himself as having been dissatisfied, but in fact Who is He? has a similarly happy ending.

Principal photography

thumb|Still from the film

Filming began on 25 February 1926 and principal photography was completed within six weeks. Because Hitchcock practised film methods that mirrored those of German expressionism, scenes would not run for much longer than three minutes each. According to Tripp: "Fresh from Berlin, Hitch was so imbued with the value of unusual camera angles and lighting effects with which to create and sustain dramatic suspense that often a scene which would not run for more than three minutes on the screen would take a morning to shoot."

Tripp had recently undergone an operation at the start of the shoot. She wrote in her autobiography that as a result of Hitchcock making her perform repeated takes of one scene, she felt a "sickening pain somewhere in the region of my appendix scar", and had to return to hospital.

Directorial style and cinematography

In framing the shots, Hitchcock was influenced by post-war horror, social unrest and the emotional fear of abnormality and madness. The film is silent, but words were not necessary given the visual method of storytelling.

A memorable scene occurs when the Buntings look up at their kitchen ceiling, listening to the lodger pacing above. The ceiling then becomes transparent and the lodger is then seen walking on it (a thick sheet of toughened glass was used). According to the Criterion Collection review by Philip Kemp, this scene was composed of "sixty-five shots in just over six minutes, with no title cards to interrupt. Some disconcerting camera angles, including one straight down the staircase as we see the lodger’s disembodied hand sliding down the banister." On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10.

The Lodger continued themes that would run through much of Hitchcock's later work, such as that of an innocent man on the run. Hitchcock had reportedly studied contemporary films by Murnau and Lang, whose influence may be seen in the ominous camera angles and claustrophobic lighting. While Hitchcock had made two films, in later years the director would refer to The Lodger as the first true "Hitchcock film." Beginning with The Lodger, Hitchcock helped shape the modern thriller genre in film.

After arriving in the United States in 1940, Hitchcock was involved with a radio adaptation of the film with Herbert Marshall, Edmund Gwenn and Lurene Tuttle. The adaptation preserves the original novel's ending rather than that of the film and does not resolve the question of the lodger's identity as the killer.

In early 1942, the Los Angeles Times reported that Hitchcock was considering a colour remake of The Lodger following the completion of Saboteur (1942), but he was unable to obtain the film rights.

In 2014, the Dallas Chamber Symphony commissioned an original film score for The Lodger from composer Douglas Pipes. The score premiered at a concert screening of the film on 8 October 2014 at Moody Performance Hall with Richard McKay conducting.

The Lodger has been considered by some film critics to be Hitchcock's greatest silent film.

Preservation status and home media

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Hitchcock's birth, an orchestral soundtrack was composed by Ashley Irwin. The recording with the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg was broadcast over the ARTE TV network in Europe on 13 August 1999. Its first live performance occurred on 29 September 2000 in the Nikolaisaal in Potsdam by the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg under the direction of Scott Lawton. Following several restorations, a new tinted digital restoration of The Lodger was completed in 2012 as part of the BFI's £2 million "Save the Hitchcock 9" project to restore Hitchcock's surviving silent films. Various licensed, restored releases have appeared on DVD, Blu-ray and Video on demand services worldwide from Network Distributing in the UK, MGM and Criterion in the U.S. and others.