Alfred Hitchcock made a lot of movies, especially early in his career. I’m mainly familiar with his Hollywood work. The only pre-Hollywood film I’d seen before this was The 39 Steps. So, The Lodger is by far the earliest of his films I’ve now seen. It was even a silent film. While it lacks the stars, polish, and budget of later films, it’s cool how much this still feels like a Hitchcock movie. The suspense and surprise are already there by his 3rd film. This is actually a big relief for me. I’ve had a bunch of his early films on my watchlist for a while and had been holding off, because I worried that it took him a while to become the Alfred Hitchcock we know now. Nope. He came ready-made from the looks of it.
It’s also fun to think of this as Hitchcock’s Zodiac. The killer is Jack the Ripper even if he’s not calling him that. Jack’s murders happened about 30 years before this film, which is enough to assume he’s done, still recent enough to think he could still be out there somewhere. This is a simple but fun movie that uses the allure of the Ripper well.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment