The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

The first true Hitchcock thriller — the film he later called the beginning of his real career. London is terrorized by a serial killer who targets blonde women, and a mysterious, soft-spoken lodger (Ivor Novello) takes a room in a family's boarding house, arousing suspicion with his nocturnal habits and his unsettling interest in their golden-haired daughter. Hitchcock, deeply influenced by his time studying at UFA studios in Germany, fills the film with Expressionist touches: the famous shot of the lodger pacing above, seen through a glass ceiling; the eerie glow of a gaslight on the stairway; the mounting paranoia in tight domestic spaces. The theme that would obsess Hitchcock for decades — the wrong man accused, the audience manipulated into doubting the innocent — is already fully present. A masterpiece of atmosphere and suspense.