The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

If there's one Hitchcock silent films fans should see, it's this suspense-filled thriller, which provides an early indication of why and how he earned his 'Master of Suspense' title. Read full review

The movie simultaneously exploits and condemns our fear of the other — we suspect the stranger we know nothing about simply because we know nothing about him, and we almost hope that he's the killer because we so desperately want to be right. Read full review

Hitchcock's 1926 silent melodrama offers a gripping prehistory not just of his own work, but the Hollywood thriller itself. Read full review

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Read full review

Hitchcock's first thriller and the film that established him: A moody silent melodrama based on Marie Belloc Lowndes' tale of a mysterious lodger in fear-crazed London, who may be a modern Jack the Ripper. [04 Jan 2002, p.C1]

The Lodger has rarely been seen as Hitchcock’s crowning glory, but it can be appreciated as a piece of film history marking the genesis of the great director he would become. Read full review

Look into Ivor Novello’s haunted, kohl-rimmed eyes in Hitch’s most overtly Hitchcockian silent film – his first of many ‘wrong man’ mysteries – and you can see generations of matinee idols coming full circle. Read full review

Many of [Hitchcock]'s signature motifs were established with this film, including a memorable climax with Novello almost killed by a bloodthirsty mob, and Hitchcock’s first trademark cameo appearance. Read full review

Telling the story of a sexy-but-dangerous lodger, whom our heroine suspects may be Jack the Ripper, Hitchcock builds upon clues and doubts, while making Ivor Novello’s character increasingly intriguing. Read full review

A showcase for director Alfred Hitchcock’s intense study of the German Expressionist movement, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog boasts artfully animated intertitles, plunging shadows, and oppressive camera angles. Read full review

If Alfred Hitchcock's 1926 "The Lodger" lacks the intense suspense and dynamic fluidity of the Hitchcock classics, it is nonetheless a remarkably assured third film and the first he considered truly his own. [13 Aug 1996, p.F10]

Not a great film, but a remarkable one, with Hitchcock at his most “innovative,” shooting through plate-glass floors and generally one-upping the expressionist cliches of the period. Read full review

The movie is very much in the German expressionist manner and contains the seeds of Hitch's subsequent work (the fascination with technique and problem-solving, the obsession with blondes, the fear of authority, the ambivalence towards homosexuality), and there's a brief personal appearance, though such traits were not to be obligatory until after Rebecca. [12 Aug 2012, p.22]

One of Hitchcock's earlier efforts that was hacked around a bit to take out some of the more ambiguous psychological elements by the editor but still retains the old Hitch charm. Read full review

This is an impressive study in anticlimax, more distinguished than the usually quoted classic example of "For God, for country and for Yale." The picture has a very, very excellent begining, a mediocre middle and a most deplorable ending. Read full review