The Lodger (1944)

I love this movie so much

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A once prosperous couple has run into financial difficulties and is forced to take in a lodger. At first the lodger seems a perfect gentleman - he is polite, he pays generously, he wears sober and respectable clothes - but after a while his nocturnal wanderings and weird little habits begin to arouse suspicion. And what about his strange aversion to Kitty, the kind-hearted niece ? Could the man be the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing ?Pretty entertaining and suspenseful movie, part mystery, part melodrama. The black-and-white cinematography is superb, creating a delightful play of clair/obscur effects. Even the fog filling the streets is admirable. There is also a rich vein of imagery and allegory here. You get Victorian-era light and lighting in all its forms : as a symbol of conspicious consumption, a symbol of law-abiding order and civic progress, and so on. Light can even be dangerous, as shown in the music-hall number where Kitty and her show girls dance close to a semi-cercle of dangerously vicious lamps. The movie tells you that these beautiful moths are dancing too close to the fire, from a moral viewpoint, but it also reminds you of the fact that the lighting used in dance-halls and theaters caused many an accident and many a disaster. (Unless I'm very much mistaken, some of the great theater and music-hall fires of the nineteenth and twentieth century still stand as the worst fire-related catastrophes ever recorded.) The movie is wonderfully evocative and atmospheric in other ways, too. Its mist-shrouded London is an endlessly fascinating place, combining extremes of poverty and luxury and pulsing with life, danger and discovery. Warmly recommended.

This very rare and superior Jack the Ripper tale is directed with great style by John Brahm. It begins in a very pleasingly gloomy way: London smog, cobbled streets awash with rain water (and other less healthy fluids), plenty of policemen with whistles blowing through the darkness. All this is laid on with the thickest trowel, as is much of the dialogue ("Like a shadow, 'e was!") but is never over-the-top – just full of atmosphere. Plenty of condescension for the lower classes too. "Boy! Paper!" Imagine saying that to a paper-deliverer now.The melancholic Mr Slade (a tremendous performance from Laird Creger) comes to rent a room. If he was wearing a placard pronouncing 'I am the Ripper everyone's talking about', he couldn't be more blatant and suspicious. Cregar underwent a strict diet for this role, which contributed to his sad death shortly after at the age of 31.'Ghost of Frankenstein (1941)' star Sir Cedric Hardwicke (who is much more convincing here than as the starchy Frankenstein) plays Robert Bonting, whose wife rents Slade the room, and the police Inspector in charge of the events is played by the terrific George Sanders. Billy Bevan, who features in a handful of Universal chillers (including 'Dracula's Daughter (1936)' and 1943's 'Return of the Vampire'), plays the bartender. Some rich, fruity voices here.Only the couple's daughter Kitty (an excellent Merle Oberon) seems to believe in Slade as his increasingly strange and paranoid behaviour leads others to the conclusion – understandably – that he is the Ripper. Yet even her veneer begins to crack as his true colours may or may not be revealed in a genuinely thrilling finale. And yet nowhere is it implicitly stated that he is Jack. What a hidden gem this is.

I suppose that when the screen writers sat down to write this script that they had to make a decision: do we let the audience know who the murderer is right away, or is the mystery where the suspense is? Here they chose the former, which requires the suspense to build as the "good guys" slowly begin to figure out who the murderer is. It's not the easiest task, but here they do it quite well (in that sense it reminded me a bit of Alfred Hitchcock's "I Confess").Sometimes this film gets labeled as a "horror" film, but it should be classed as a "suspense film". Hitchcock directed a silent version of the tale, but not this rendition...although it might remind many viewers of a Hitchcock flick. The director here -- John Brahm -- had a rather checkered career that included some brilliant "Twilight Zone" episodes, but also the horrible Dana Andrews/Jeanne Crain film "Hot Rods From Hell". This film may have been his apex.The casting here is quite good. It's a different kind of role for the lovely Merle Oberon, here as a French-style can-can dancer. She does well and makes a perfect victim, and her hair style is great because it covers her very high forehead. But Laird Cregar -- as Jack The Ripper -- is the real star here...he is "the lodger". Cregar died from an excessive diet that he took for the film following this one; he was only 31. For once, George Sanders is the good guy -- a Scotland Yard inspector, and the love interest for Merle Oberon. Sir Cedric Hardwicke does nicely as the father who at first is sure Cregar is innocent, but slowly comes around to believing his wife (Sara Allgood) that Cregar is Jack The Ripper.The sets are appropriately atmospheric, the acting very good, and the story -- though relatively predictable (but then again, that's true of most movies) -- moves at a nice pace with a nice level of suspense. Highly recommended.

A strange man rents a room at a London house while Jack the Ripper terrorizes the city. His peculiar behavior has people wondering if he is the killer. The expressionistic cinematography, marked by foggy nights and shadowy figures, helps create an eerie atmosphere. Oberon is fine as an actress that the lodger takes an interest in. Also good are Sanders as an inspector, who oddly openly discusses his case with everyone, and Hardwicke and Allgood as the landlords. The film made Cregar a star, but sadly the portly actor suffered a fatal heart attack at 28 after making only one other film. Unfortunately, the visual elegance is undercut by the lackluster and obvious script.