This electrifying early feature starring an ambiguously appealing Ivor Novello shows the young director marshalling a new medium's visual power
The Lodger, the silent film that Hitchcock directed in 1927, is generally acknowledged to be the one where he properly found his "voice": that distinctive combination of death and fetishism, trick shots and music-hall humour, intense menace and elegant camerawork that assured his place among cinema's giants. Hitchcock would go on to make more polished films, scarier films, more suspenseful films, better-acted films, funnier films and weirder films. But none, I think, as simply extraordinary.
The material, drawn from a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes (sister of Hilaire), is rather obviously inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders; they were still within living memory. Hitchcock himself claimed later that producing studio Gainsborough (including Michael Balcon) ordered him to remove any ambiguity that the central character, the mysterious room-renter of the title,...
The Lodger, the silent film that Hitchcock directed in 1927, is generally acknowledged to be the one where he properly found his "voice": that distinctive combination of death and fetishism, trick shots and music-hall humour, intense menace and elegant camerawork that assured his place among cinema's giants. Hitchcock would go on to make more polished films, scarier films, more suspenseful films, better-acted films, funnier films and weirder films. But none, I think, as simply extraordinary.
The material, drawn from a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes (sister of Hilaire), is rather obviously inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders; they were still within living memory. Hitchcock himself claimed later that producing studio Gainsborough (including Michael Balcon) ordered him to remove any ambiguity that the central character, the mysterious room-renter of the title,...
- 7/30/2012
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Betty Compson, Clive Brook, Woman to Woman Despite some confusion in various reports, the 1923 melodrama The White Shadow, half of which was recently found at the New Zealand Film Archive, is not Alfred Hitchcock's directorial debut. It isn't Hitchcock's first ever credited effort, either. That honor apparently belongs to Woman to Woman, which came out earlier that same year. The White Shadow, in fact, was a Woman to Woman afterthought. Both movies were directed by Graham Cutts, both were produced by future British film industry stalwarts Victor Saville and Michael Balcon, both were based on works by Michael Morton (the earlier film was taken from a Morton play; the later one from a Morton novel), and both starred Clive Brook and Hollywood import Betty Compson. (Compson plays two parts in both films as well; but whereas in The White Shadow she plays two actual characters, in Woman to Woman...
- 8/3/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Some of the finest directors have produced masterful triptychs. But do we really need a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean?
It currently seems the only three that interests Hollywood relates to dimensionality. The reverence once extended to the film trilogy is fast diminishing, and although third instalments are due for Transformers, Ong-Bak, Paranormal Activity, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Men in Black, Madagascar, Batman and Iron Man, only the first two have been announced as series finales.
Indeed, with Scre4m, Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides and Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World soon to be followed by fourth entries in the Austin Powers, Mission: Impossible, Underworld and Bourne franchises, the trilogy could soon go the way of the 2D movie, as the synergy-obsessed suits controlling the multi-media conglomerates now owning the major studios adhere to the maxim that familiarity breeds both content and profit.
It currently seems the only three that interests Hollywood relates to dimensionality. The reverence once extended to the film trilogy is fast diminishing, and although third instalments are due for Transformers, Ong-Bak, Paranormal Activity, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Men in Black, Madagascar, Batman and Iron Man, only the first two have been announced as series finales.
Indeed, with Scre4m, Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides and Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World soon to be followed by fourth entries in the Austin Powers, Mission: Impossible, Underworld and Bourne franchises, the trilogy could soon go the way of the 2D movie, as the synergy-obsessed suits controlling the multi-media conglomerates now owning the major studios adhere to the maxim that familiarity breeds both content and profit.
- 4/25/2011
- by David Parkinson
- The Guardian - Film News
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