Abstract
The Lodger, a British silent film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, was produced in 1926 and released in 1927. It starred Ivor Novello as a mysterious young man who lodges in a London home at a time when a number of blonde-haired young women have been murdered in the city. It was one of the most significant British films of the decade, praised by critics who in particular appreciated Hitchcock’s importation of German techniques which were used to create suspense and atmosphere. The Lodger was released when the British film industry was struggling to survive, and it represented a sophisticated response to the problem of producing distinctive film drama at a time when the market was more or less dominated by Hollywood’s films. Hitchcock’s adaptation of a popular story, based on the Jack the Ripper murders, can be linked to contemporary fears of, and ambivalence about, modernity and city life, and is distinctively British in its settings. As this chapter will also argue, it raises questions of gender identity which featured in many German films of this period (Petro, 1989).
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References
Gledhill, Christine 1999: ‘Taking it Forward: Theatricality and British Cinema Style in the 1920s’. In Linda Fitzsimmons and Sarah Street (eds), Moving Performance: Theatre and Early Cinema in Britain. Wiltshire: Flicks Books.
Manvell, Roger 1951: ‘Revaluations’. In Sight and Sound, January, 378.
Petro, Patrice 1989: Joyless Streets: Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ryall, Tom 1986: Alfred Hitchcock and the British Cinema. London: Croom Helm.
Spoto, Donald 1986: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock: The Dark Side of Genius. London: Collins.
Street, Sarah 1997: British National Cinema. London: Routledge.
Thompson, Kristin and Bordwell, David 1994: Film History: An Introduction, NewYork: McGraw-Hill.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Barr, Charles 1997: ‘Before Blackmail: Silent British Cinema’. In Robert Murphy (ed.), The British Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute.
Barr, Charles 1999: English Hitchcock. London: Cameron & Hollis.
Higson, Andrew 1993: Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Low, Rachel 1971: The History of the British Film, 1918–1929. London: Allen and Unwin.
Copyright information
© 2000 Sarah Street
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Street, S. (2000). The Lodger. In: European Cinema. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-08034-9_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-08034-9_4
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