Even though I know I do not like silent films, I tried very hard to keep an open mind going into The Lodger. I thought that if anyone could get me to enjoy a silent film, Hitchcock could. Boy, was I wrong. With no disrespect to good ol' Alfred, not even he could salvage a silent film in my mind. I think I just need to come to grips with the fact that I will never be able to fully enjoy a silent movie.
I guarantee you will never see me wearing this shirt!
So enough with the complaining about silent movies. While watching The Lodger, I did gain some interesting insights into the world of silent films:
Limits of Wording - More so in this movie, that in any other silent film I've watched, I noticed the use and importance of audience speculation to feed into the movie. At several points I expected to see the queue cards pop up on screen to direct the audience and help them understand what was going on in the scene, but they never came. I was forced to fill in the dialogue, story gaps, or situational description, based entirely on my perception of what was going on or what I thought was being said. At first I was slightly annoyed, considering I am used to being spoon fed dialogue, plot points, ir descriptions. But, as I went back to think about it, I saw how it was a great tool for the movie, and for the directors. If left much more to me, as an audience member, to try and figure out what was happening. Hitchcock in my opinion, used this to his full advantage, and I believe he used this aspect to lead audience members to think in a certain direction. For me, the direction i took based on the actions in the movie, took me a different way than it ended up playing out. The limit of words did benefit Hitchcock in his storytelling, particularly, it allowed him to feed into the emotional angle in our minds rather than just being spoon fed the course of action as we see in movies today.
Melodramatic Acting of the Lodger
The role of the lodger was very interesting to me. With the inability to use words to portray thoughts, emotion or desire, these silent film actors obviously had to rely heavily on facial expressions to demonstrate the thoughts or feelings their character felt during the scene. This can be an awesome (possibly fun) tool for an actor. if they are sad, they can look sad, in return the audience assumes they are sad. In that aspect it is simple and easy for the audience. It is also very easy for an actor to fool the audience into thinking their character thinks or feels one way, when it really is not. In this case the lodger was very melodramatic, serious, and almost down right creepy. Much like we may attribute to someone we refer to as "emo" in today's slang. These qualities are ones that a person might attribute to a person who is a murderer. It worked very well, as audience members may debate over and over in their minds if you think the man was the actual murderer or not. Hitchcock does a great job of milking this aspect, as does the actor in fooling us to think something is one way, when in the reality of the movie, it is not. his emotions seem to be done concisely with a direct intent.
Filtering Colors
Sitting in the seat as a biased audience member, one who is subject to sensory overload in nearly every action or adventure movie put in theaters today, the color filters in The Lodger was nothing more than a hinderance.
While I can see the point of doing filtering colors - it helps set the mood and theme to the scene being viewed - it just gets in the way for me. Due to the fact the the filtering covers the entire shot, it seems to have two negative effects to me: (1) it seems to wash out the scene and (2) it detracts from the very important facial expressions and queues given by the actors. With this being said, ifI were to put myself in the seat of someone watching this in the theatre for the first time, being used to nothing but black and white, I could see hot I would be entertained and blown away by such an effect. This could possibly be close to the sensation we have today in seeing a 3-D movie for the first time.
Human Nature
Under the "Human Nature" subject, I plan to comment frequently on throughout the semester. I feel that as times change, the very basics of humanity does not, and I would like to take notice of the similarities between people then and how they relate to how we are today. (As I see it, the fundamentals of human action will remain the same throughout time)
When the lodger first enters, we know of a relationship between a lady and her boyfriend - who is soon given the responsibility, as a detective, of finding the person responsible for the many murders that have recently occurred. Before too long, the lady and the lodger start talking and flirting, and in a short period of time, she leaves her old boyfriend for the new house guest, This, of course, is not taken too well by the old boyfriend. As a wounded, bitter ex, the old boyfriend turns his jealousy toward the lodger and tries pinning the murders on him, which he, more or less, is successful at. As a type of revenge toward the lodger, he does everything in his power to get back at him.
This is a very naturalistic part of being a human. It is also a characteristic that is commonly seen throughout time and is all around us today (both in real life and in movies). A wounded person, unfortunately it is usually a man, seeks revenge on the one who has wronged him. In most cases it is another man who has taken his love away from him. This story, which at its very basic level is unchanged, happens today as much as it ever has in the past.
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