This rips! It’s undeniably attributable to my ignorance and the simple fact of being overly exposed to culture from the specific place and time that I was born in but I’ve watched a good handful of silent film this past year and I’m always surprised when it works as well as it often has! I’m almost embarrassed to admit that because I’ve had more than enough evidence to the contrary and just the idea of “I won’t connect with this because it’s old” is so juvenile but I think as much as I’ve tried that’s a hard thing to scrub because it’s a natural instinct. Still, it seems I’ll continue to be shocked by something contradicting a belief I don’t even hold. Either way, this was such a solid thriller, really great stuff. The characters and overall plot is just intriguing the entire time, and the whole thing creates a really fun watch experience on two levels because of that. The first level is as I said- the pure enjoyment of this being a really gripping story with cool turns that is consistently engaging. The second level is the meta-textual one, because it’s a really fascinating experience to see someone who is as boisterous a figure and as pivotal to the medium as Alfred Hitchcock find his footing. It’s incredibly hard to picture a Hitchcock in his 20s, still experimenting and figuring out his voice as he goes along, but you can feel it here. You can feel his specific sensibilities and talents get more and more confident as it goes on, which is cool considering this is similarly a stepping stone in the larger scope of his career. Even little things like the subtle eye he has for graphics on the text frames key into the much larger role he will eventually play. This is a great film in its own right, and really holds it own as a thriller even by modern standards, but what makes it even more special is that you rarely get to see something feel like it’s foreshadowing a real person behind the camera, yet to come but to change everything when they do. The idea that the same guy who did this did Vertigo is mind-boggling, but I guess my larger point is that aside from anything else what really makes Hitchcock continue to last (which will proceed for at least my lifetime) is that the largest thing The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog and Vertigo have in common is that they are just excellent. You can travel back more than 100 years in time and the fundamental rule still hasn’t changed: a Hitchcock movie will excite you.
This rips! It’s undeniably attributable to my ignorance and the simple fact of being overly exposed to culture from the specific place and time that I was born in but I’ve watched a good handful of silent film this past year and I’m always surprised when it works as well as it often has! I’m almost embarrassed to admit that because I’ve had more than enough evidence to the contrary and just the idea of “I won’t connect with this because it’s old” is so juvenile but I think as much as I’ve tried that’s a hard thing to scrub because it’s a natural instinct. Still, it seems I’ll continue to be shocked by something contradicting a belief I don’t even hold. Either way, this was such a solid thriller, really great stuff. The characters and overall plot is just intriguing the entire time, and the whole thing creates a really fun watch experience on two levels because of that. The first level is as I said- the pure enjoyment of this being a really gripping story with cool turns that is consistently engaging. The second level is the meta-textual one, because it’s a really fascinating experience to see someone who is as boisterous a figure and as pivotal to the medium as Alfred Hitchcock find his footing. It’s incredibly hard to picture a Hitchcock in his 20s, still experimenting and figuring out his voice as he goes along, but you can feel it here. You can feel his specific sensibilities and talents get more and more confident as it goes on, which is cool considering this is similarly a stepping stone in the larger scope of his career. Even little things like the subtle eye he has for graphics on the text frames key into the much larger role he will eventually play. This is a great film in its own right, and really holds it own as a thriller even by modern standards, but what makes it even more special is that you rarely get to see something feel like it’s foreshadowing a real person behind the camera, yet to come but to change everything when they do. The idea that the same guy who did this did Vertigo is mind-boggling, but I guess my larger point is that aside from anything else what really makes Hitchcock continue to last (which will proceed for at least my lifetime) is that the largest thing The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog and Vertigo have in common is that they are just excellent. You can travel back more than 100 years in time and the fundamental rule still hasn’t changed: a Hitchcock movie will excite you.
