The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

Hitchcock, Gainsborough, 1927 (shown to the trade the year before). A lodger (Ivor Novello) takes a room while a killer who prefers fair hair works the fog. Daisy, downstairs, is blonde. Hitchcock had a glass floor built so he could shoot Novello's pacing from below and superimpose it on the ceiling, a way to make footsteps without sound. Bioscope called it possibly the finest British production ever made. The film is already about suspicion more than proof.