CIPC #120: The lodger: A story of the London fog
One might easily forget it, but the great Alfred Hitchcock started his career all the way back in the twenties, more than thirty years before Psycho, making silent movies because talkies weren’t a thing yet. One of these, the one that put him firmly on the map, in fact, was The lodger: A story of the London fog. Its plot is heavily inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel, London at the end of the nineteenth century: a serial killer goes around London, butchering a young, blond woman every Tuesday. After these facts have been established, we are introduced to Daisy Bunting, a young woman who works as a model for a local fashion show. Despite her blond hair, she is not too worried about the serial killer and cheerfully reaches home. Her parents take in a new lodger and then, as the title cards put it, “one evening, a few days later, the lodger made himself agreeable.” Apparently, this means he plays a game of chess with Daisy.1
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