To celebrate me getting kicked out of my apartment by my neurotic man hating roommate/land lord, I'm writing about The Lodger. Which is close to my favorite Hitchcock film.

Though some folks are in denial, I think anyone with a bit of common sense can see that Hitchcock made better films in England than he did in America. The reason for this might not be because he was in England, but might be because he was more keen to break the rules when he was in England, which was largely in the beginning and the end of his career (which is part of the reason Psycho is so good, it was done "indie"). One of the things that is so amazing about The Lodger is that it shows a lot of the talent that Hitchcock was not using in his later films, particularly the talent for visual narratives and stylization.

I guess what both those things are shorthand for is that the film is amazingly visually compelling, which on the whole I don't think that Hitchcock films are (they are narratively compelling, and he's about the best person in the history of the world next to D.W. Griffith at telling a story with film... and he's a much more likable person than Griffith). The film centers on a extremely handsome man who "comes out of the London fog" looking for a room, the catch is that there is a mass murderer on the loose, and men who are that sexy must be slightly dangerous (or so the police inspector thinks, who's dating the daughter of the family the lodger stays with).

Ivor Novello is great, he has that brooding sexy look that really all men should have when its dark and foggy, and they are always accentuated well by pretty girls in one of those 20s skirts that occasionally make my heart skip a beat. What's really great in the film is the lighting, and just the overall atmosphere of the film. There are few of the chatty people that add that creepy light-heartedness of Hitchcock's sound films (I don't mean that in a bad way, I'm pretty sure Hitchcock meant the light-heartedness to be creepy, he often put his daughter in those roles). This film does all it can to accentuate the danger of the situation, and in doing-so accentuate the sexiness of the main character.

The film really isn't about murder at all, its a star vehicle, and because of that the true purpose of the film is to accentuate Novello's appeal. It uses the threat of a mass murderer to this end... because the consciousness of death always makes one strangely aware of the presence of beauty.

Frenzy is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies, and I don't just say this because of the wonderful ending. What makes this film really great is that it seems to show the type of director Hitchcock would have been he started his career at a different time. Because while Frenzy is the most grusome of Hitchcock's movies, it is still prototypically Hitchcock

The plot does not need description, but it should be noted that the film uses a theme which is quite clearly Hitchcock's favorite. The main character is falsely accused of some sort of horrific crime, but while he did not commit the crime, he secretly wants to. This theme is most strongly pronounced in Strangers on a Train (in fact, if you take out the Macguffin... Hitchcock's term for the plot that covers up the psycological aspects of the film... Strangers and Frenzy are essentially the same movie), but also Notorious, I Confess, and The Wrong Man.

Hitchcock is also really most in his element when working outside of the Hollywood system. In my modest opinion (and most people seem to disagree with me), his English films are far superior to his Hollywood films, and his best Hollywood film is the one that he made for no money with a TV crew (Psycho). There is a certain freedom in his early English films, and his post studio system films, which is taken as far as possible with Frenzy.

Everyone should see Frenzy just because it is a great film (unless you have a real problem watching movies with sex crimes in them, which I can completly understand). What really makes Frenzy important to my mind though is how it puts the rest of Hitchcock's films in the right light.

Buy Frenzy here