Unfortunately, this famous film was for me a bit of a disappointment. The novice Hitchcock is clearly in love with special effects and the manufacture of suspense, but he resorts to devices that are all too obviously manufactured in his endeavour to throw suspicion on the eponymous lodger. It's pretty difficult to poke a fire in such a way as to poise the poker threateningly above the head of the girl on the other side of the table, even if she is bending down to retrieve a lost chess-piece; and it's pretty crude to have your suspect pretend to stab the heroine with a table-knife. And when the murderer is known to have a fixation of blonde girls, it's not exactly subtle to have your suspect talk not about the beauty, but the colour of the heroine's hair -- lack of subtlety is the main theme here, culminating in the lodger's 'crucifixion', when a trickle of blood oozes from his mouth in what is doubtless intended to be a deeply significant shot. The story is a potentially good one, but the execution is too often ham-handed... not aided, I'm afraid, by some poor acting.
It does annoy me when people dismiss bad acting in silents with airy phrases such as 'you had to overact to get the story across without dialogue' and 'that style of acting was normal in those days'; any decent silent-era actor can get his message across just by the way he moves and reacts without making eyes at the camera or gesturing around, and wooden acting is wooden acting in any era. Top silent actors were often better than talkie actors because they didn't have the crutch of dialogue to distract from awkward body language; if it looked unnatural, everyone would notice.
Ivor Novello had no pretensions to be a great screen actor -- he was originally selected for film roles simply on the grounds of his striking good looks, and cheerfully admitted it -- but this is far from being his best performance. He gives every indication of reacting to off-screen directions as to what expression to pull next, rather than communicating clearly with the audience; some scenes are far more successful than others. Malcolm Keen in the role of his rival Joe, the detective, is little better, and the mysterious "June" (perhaps a contemporary society celebrity with whom the audience was expected to be on first-name terms?) acts them both off the screen, as do the character actors who play her parents.
The film has good moments, generally when a touch of humour is allowed to break up the would-be intensity or when the actors relax enough to give more natural performances, but it left me feeling nakedly manipulated. There are flashes of talent, but all concerned are trying too obviously and too hard; I'm not sure I could honestly recommend it, save for curiosity's sake.
It does annoy me when people dismiss bad acting in silents with airy phrases such as 'you had to overact to get the story across without dialogue' and 'that style of acting was normal in those days'; any decent silent-era actor can get his message across just by the way he moves and reacts without making eyes at the camera or gesturing around, and wooden acting is wooden acting in any era. Top silent actors were often better than talkie actors because they didn't have the crutch of dialogue to distract from awkward body language; if it looked unnatural, everyone would notice.
Ivor Novello had no pretensions to be a great screen actor -- he was originally selected for film roles simply on the grounds of his striking good looks, and cheerfully admitted it -- but this is far from being his best performance. He gives every indication of reacting to off-screen directions as to what expression to pull next, rather than communicating clearly with the audience; some scenes are far more successful than others. Malcolm Keen in the role of his rival Joe, the detective, is little better, and the mysterious "June" (perhaps a contemporary society celebrity with whom the audience was expected to be on first-name terms?) acts them both off the screen, as do the character actors who play her parents.
The film has good moments, generally when a touch of humour is allowed to break up the would-be intensity or when the actors relax enough to give more natural performances, but it left me feeling nakedly manipulated. There are flashes of talent, but all concerned are trying too obviously and too hard; I'm not sure I could honestly recommend it, save for curiosity's sake.