THE LODGER / A STORY OF THE LONDON FOG

"The Lodger was the first real 'Hitchcock film'. I had seen a theatrical work called Who is it? adapted from the Belloc-Lowndes novel, The Lodger. The action takes place in a boarding house and the landlady wonders if the new tenant is a killer known as The Avenger, a type like Jack the Ripper. I treated this material very simply, entirely from the point of view of the woman, the landlady…
"The Lodger is the first film where I put into practice what I learned in Germany. My relationship to this film was entirely instinctive. I applied my style for the first time. really, we can say that The Lodger is my first film…
"When the film was screened for the first time, several distribution people and the head of publicity were present. They saw the film and then they wrote a report to the general director: 'It is impossible to present it. It is too inferior. It is a very bad film'. Two days later the director general came to the film studio to see it. He came at two thirty. My wife and I did not want to wait for him to find out his decision. We went around the streets of London and we walked around for more than an hour. At last, we took a taxi and returned to the film studio. We were hoping that the walk would have a happy ending and we would find everyone enthusiastic. They told me: 'The general director finds the film very inferior too'. Then they put my film aside and canceled the rental contracts they had made thanks to the name of Novello. A few months later, after they had seen the film again, they suggested some changes. I agreed to do two of them. And ever since the time that the film was released, it has always been received very favorably and is considered the best English film made up until that time." (excerpts from Le cinéma selon Hitchcock, edited by François Truffaut; Italian translation, Il cinema secondo Hitchcock, Pratiche Editrice)

The Lodger is the first Hitchcock film to win international acclaim. Despite the popularity of the leading man, Ivor Novello, the film at first ran into distribution problems. After various attempts, Hitchcock succeeded in getting the film to be screened in London movie theaters. The result was an extraordinary audience success that was unprecedented in the British cinema. The film was sold abroad and received by the press as the "first masterpiece of British film production". Many of the characteristic elements of Hitchcockian style appear in embryo form in The Lodger, primarily the incrimination of the main character on the basis of appearances. Hitchcock makes his first cameo inside one of his own films in the middle of the curious people who are watching Ivor Novello being captured.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Plot: dal romanzo omonimo di Marie Adelaide BellocLowndes.
Screenplay: Alfred Hitchcock e Elliot Stannard.
Director of photography: Hal Young, Giovanni Ventimiglia.
Editor: Ivor Montagu.
Aiuto regia: Alma Reville.
Art director: Wilfred Arnold, Bertram Evans.
Cast: Ivor Novello (Jonathan Drew), Mario Ault (Mrs. Bunting), Arthur Chesney (Mr. Bunting), Malcom Keen (Joe Betts), Miss June (Daisy Bunting).
Production company: Gainsborough Pictures.

CONSERVAZIONE E RESTAURO / CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION

Copia proveniente dal British Film Institute, ristampata nel 1983.