The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) – 3/5

Jack the Lodger?

„The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog“ that is sometimes also just briefly known as „The Lodger“ is a British full feature silent film from 1927, so this one will have its 100th anniversary relatively soon or perhaps it happened already depending on when you read this review of mine. The intertitles here are of course in the English language and I have read people make a statement that this is the best silent film ever made from the United Kingdom. I am not if I agree with that because I am far from having seen the majority, but it was fairly decent as a whole I guess. The fact that it is still also shown in movie theaters, like the time where I saw it where it was 50% part of a UK film retrospective and 50% part of a silent film series, has a lot to do with the man in charge of the project behind the camera was the young Alfred Hitchcock. This was apparently the fifth work from his career, including unfinished and uncredited work, and he has not done a really great deal of short film work as many other famous filmmakers have in their early years. But he shot movies for another 50 years afterwards. Of course, this film here is also a black-and-white movie although you get the color impact here that you often see in silent films when scenes outside are more on the blueish side and scenes inside have an ounce of yellow/brown to them. The movie runs for 1.5 hours and I will say a few words about the cast too, even if I cannot say I am particularly familiar with these folks. The title character was played by Ivor Novello, a man of many talents. He has as many writing credits as acting credits and also he was keen on music. His screen acting stretched only from the early 1920s to the mid1930s, even if he lived on for another 1.5 decades afterwards, but still died before the age of 60. If we look at the poster from this film here, apparently he was the big star.

The female lead is June Tripp and she has an interesting career. Hardly acted in anything before 1926, then had a break of over 15 years before she returned to acting in several English-language projects around the end of World War II, but another decade later her career was over too, although she lived on for another 30 years afterwards, but hey at least she appeared in a version of „Les Misérables“. Arthur Chesney and especially Marie Ault are the epitome of prolific actors in black-and-white films from the first half of the 20th century. If we look at the writing credits, one is Hitchcock of course and another name is Marie Belloc Lowndes, who was around the age of 60 when this film got made and you don’t have it super often during that era that female writers are included, but the reason here is that she is the one who wrote the base material. This was the first time that her work got turned into a film or actually it wasn’t, but it was the first time for her „The Lodger“ work to be taken to the screen. Many more should follow, the most recent from 2009 apparently, many decades after her death. She is not forgotten. The third and final writer is Eliot Stannard, who has a total of 169 writing credits listed. Really as prolific as it gets, even though during times back then you will often find numbers that are unthinkable nowadays. But still for Stannard, just like for pretty much everybody else here who worked on this film in front of the camera or in the production process as part of the crew, you can say that this film is the (contender for) most known career effort. And this is the case because of the involvement of the only man for whom this is certainly not the case and that would be Alfred Hitchcock. The circle closes.

Now we look a bit at the plot and story here: First, I want to say that there were aspects to this film that seemed unusual compared to most other silent films. I am mostly referring to the intertitles there. Here often you get little logos or images with the intertitles and not just plain text, which is certainly nothing that had been done a lot back then. Also, when the action goes from one place to another, we sometimes only read the name of the character that the action follows during this change of location. The best example there is „Daisy“. Here and there, nothing but this word was written on the screen. Also, extremely unusual for silent films. Many have the problem that they lack sufficient intertitles quantity-wise, which makes it hard to understand the story at times, but usually when there are intertitles shown on the screen, they frequently include longer sentences, so it is enough that very moment. In a way, you can say that the brief inclusions here are not even intertitles, but means to make the plot more memorable as the words you read there, like „Daisy“, are of course no snippets of dialogue. I think it was a good inclusion. Hitchcock there set himself apart from the rest already. With the actual intertitles in terms of dialogues, I am still undecided if it was sufficient. Could have been more here and there, but it was tolerable I guess. Better than with most other films. If we go into detail about the story here, you can call it a crime suspense film with romance elements. The big issue at the center of the film from the beginning to (almost) the end is the question if Novello’s characer is the actual killer Jack the Ripper-resembling tale. Interestingly enough, Novello did not get first credit here, according to imdb, even if he is featured so heavily on the poster. Tripp’s name you do not read there at all. So calling this film a whodunnit feels accurate, even if we got only one suspect and we also do not find out towards the end who the actual killer was. All we do know is that he got caught. Red-handed maybe even. Kinda fitting description with the blood or actually not if he killed the women not with knifes.

Anyway, I saw another Hitchcock film from his earlier days a while ago and there it is revealed right at the very beginning who the bad guy is, even if he is (initially) not responsible for the deaths of others. With this film here, it is the exact opposite. You can keep guessing until the very end almost. There are of course indicators like the outfit with the scarf that you see on the lodger when he enters the place and we found out before that this is exactly what the killer is wearing too and there are a few situations in which the writing and camera work make it look in a way as if the lodger is ready to kill a female character, but of course he does not and then he is innocent and we find out that he made a promise to his mother before she died that he will always keep following the killer until he is caught because of what he did to his sister (and mother consequently). The sister was kinda cute by the way, I liked her more than the female protagonist. Anyway, solid explanation we get there, even if perhaps I would have liked the revelation more that the title character was indeed the killer. I would not have minded an unhappy ending at all either in which the female protagonist gets killed, but it wasn’t in the books. Like literally. Silent films, especially full features, really had happy endings most of the time and also a man like Hitchcock would not go against this common rule here. You probably would not have guessed this film is from him if you hadn’t known. But he is the one and only director and, as I stated earlier, also co-wrote the screenplay. Here and there, you also find comedic inclusions, like they made me smile at least. I am not sure if they were really meant in a comedic fashion. One would be the way in which the other guy is wooing the female protagonist early on when there is talk about blonde hair as well and he was so all over her, but turns out she is not particularly interested and only has eyes for the lodger. The way said lodger is followed in the end had almost an ounce of „M“ to it, even if there the protagonist is guilty of course. But yeah, if you dig deep for flaws with this film here, then one is maybe the pseudo drama towards the end with the lodger’s ailing health, but also how quickly he recovers. This could have been excluded.

Anyway, I was talking about the other guy and I almost felt a bit bad for him there in the scene towards the end when the female protagonist there is so mad and puts him in his place and he is sitting on this bench or what it was stuck between sadness and anger. The anger aspect I guess made it easier to not feel sorry for him. Oh and I must mention the landlady too. How she was acting when she witnessed the girl getting closer to the guys was kinda charming and cute. Same applies to the interactions with her husband. This stayed more memorable to me than the moments when she is scared and worried. A very likable character anyway and Ault made it work nicely, maybe my favorite from the film, even if she does not have true significance story-wise, but you can see that Ault had already ten prolific years in the industry at that point and had the experience and I am also not surprised she kept acting for another more than two decades afterwards. I wonder if I will recognize her in other projects at some point. Anyway, before I get to the end of my review, it can be said that not only Hitchcock has his usual little cameo here, but you also briefly get to see Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s wife of over 50 years and that is surely an exception. She contributed a lot to Hitchcock’s film, but she only has two acting credits and the other one is from much earlier and not linked to Hitchcock, so you can say that this movie here is the one that unites the lovebirds. Overall, I give „The Lodger“ a thumbs-up. It is worth seeing and I am usually critical with silent films, so this verdict is not a given. Go for it, especially if you can listen to live music during the experience. I do believe, however, that this film can/should be seen without a soundtrack too and I have to disagree with the announcer at my theater there. Essential is never bad.