Leonardo Yagerman

4/2/2022
Reaction Paper:
The Lodger
1. Narrative of the film
The plot of the film is very straightforward, there’s a killer who is committing crimes in a
certain stereotype of women back in the day. Later there’s a policeman assigned to the case
and a mysterious man comes into the scene, the mysterious man does things to alert the other
characters and think he’s the killer but then plot twist and he wasn’t the killer he was trying to
avenge his sister. It is a very typical narrative that has been exhausted to this day but back
then this was a brand-new way of writing. But when one digs deeper into the story, the story
comes to life with more context it becomes a brilliant piece of film. In the opening scenes, we
are presented with the main characters and the social context in the story, which is Daisy and
her parents who are a middle-class family, but the daughter is a model, then Joe comes into
the story being a policeman and they drive that point home with the opening lines coming
from Joe when he says he’s been put on the Avenger case. A little bit before that we see the
arrival of the Lodger but in a spooky way since when Daisy’s mother opens the door the fog
surrounds the Lodger, and he fits the description of the killer which was done intentionally to
make him appear as the killer and at the end twist the viewer expectations. One important
factor in the plot is the Lodger’s conflict with Joe, the policeman, there is a conflict of
interest between the two, and that conflict of interest is Daisy both love her, but Daisy
decides she likes better the Lodger and Joe feels despise against this mysterious man. After a
couple of nights, the Lodger leaves the house at night and comes back right after a murder
that happened, but this didn’t go undetected, Daisy’s mother had woken up and heard
everything who in turn told her husband. That’s when they started to fear their daughter’s
welfare while being with him. This is when the movie starts to approach the climax as the
Lodger buys Daisy a dress and they don’t allow her to have it and keep bothering him. Then
comes a very important scene, when Daisy is taking a bath and the Lodger comes to talk to
her through the door and later the two of them leave together. When they were in the
streetlamp where the previous murder occurred, they were caught by Joe who in turn felt rage
deep inside, which caused him to get a warrant a search the Lodger’s room. This is the point
where the plot reaches the climax and Joe follows the Lodger and Daisy to his room with two
policemen to search it and reveal what was in his bag, which contained a gun, a map and the
picture of his sister, all of this together made it seem like he was the killer but when they
were taking him to jail, he escaped and met up with Daisy. That’s the point when the plot
twist comes to life, he wanted to bring justice to the Avenger who killed his sister in a ball.
After this plot twist they go to a bar, to get brandy and heat him up since he was cold, but
when they left Joe enters looking for them and then receives a call from the police department
confirming they captured the real Avenger and that meant that the Lodger is innocent so now
we see the true character development of Joe who now goes to save him. Finally we see the
Lodger lying in a hospital bed with Daisy by his side and a doctor confirming he’ll be alright;
followed by the last scene when Daisy’s parents go to approve the man and leave them
together.
 2. Character map
Daisy
A fair-haired white girl who lived with her parents who were of the middle class, she was a
model. She had an interesting character development, started out and continued throughout
most of the film as an innocent and happy girl who was scared due to the social context of the
Avenger and the assassinations. But towards the end, we got to see her in love and devoted to
the Lodger and depicting more emotions.
The Lodger
A mysterious man who we never get to see a lot of context from him except at the end when
it is revealed that he had a sister who he cared for very much but was killed by the Avenger
and then her mother got sick and never recovered from the shock which led her to die also.
All of this was what drove him to be very reserved quiet and seemed shocked always, but
also made him care a lot for Daisy. The most amount of emotion shown was towards Daisy
because he loved her and also towards Joe because of the huge conflict they had. In the end,
he is seen to be calmed down and a happy person after the whole Avenger craze happened.
Joe
Joe is a good-looking young man who is a policeman and is made to seem to over the top and
obnoxious with his relationship with Daisy, who he wanted to marry but never could because
she never had the intention to. He is depicted as always obnoxious in every scenario since the
beginning but close to the end, the whole character arc reveals he has a heart and will do
whatever is right for justice.
Daisy’s mom
Daisy’s mom is a stereotypical stay-at-home wife who took care of the house and the men of
the house, occasionally a lodger that came to stay. She is depicted to be always calm and
happy but when she is around the Lodger, she is tense, even more prominently when it comes
to the night when she saw him leave and onwards. Not a very developed character but has a
relatively important role in the film.
Daisy’s dad
He is important to the plot in some instances, shown as a middle-class working man who was
the one that took care of the house and all the expenses. The most important scene he had was
when he confronted the Lodger about buying his daughter a dress, and that showed the
disapproval they had about him.

3. Three quotes
“Always happens Tuesdays – that’s my lucky day” – Newspaper boy at the beginning of the
film. This quote shows the importance of the media in the world and how all types of news
benefitted certain people in many ways even the most awful of news.
“I can’t have my daughter receiving presents from strangers” – Daisy’s father. This happens
when the Lodger buys Daisy the dress she was modeling, but Daisy’s father did not want him
to be in contact with his daughter after they thought he was the killer, so the Lodger really
felt bad after that.
“And it’s Tuesday night” – Daisy’s mother, this was the quote that made it crystal clear that
everyone thought that the Lodger was the Avenger/killer, this was the point when the climax
was starting and had the story take many turns to finally resolve.

All of these quotes I believe are important because they show many key factors from the film,
the first refers to the importance of media and how media depicted catastrophe, it shows it as
a way to make money and as something newspaper columns benefitted from. The other two
show two important points regarding the Lodgers real identity.
4. Discussion of the film in line with reading
The reading I want to focus on is the one talking about Hitchcock’s German expressionism
influences as it is depicted clearly in this film the influences he took from that genre of
cinema. First the camera angles, many camera angles are normal and didn’t suggest much
influence but at certain points in the film when certain gloomy emotions had to be felt the
camera angles begin to tilt and show the world through a different view. Also the exaggerated
facial expressions are a key factor to the depiction of certain emotions, the only character that
really showed this was Joe. Finally the faces of characters, everyone had such pale faces and
expressions and that is something clearly taken from German expressionism. Next, I would
like to talk about the video analysis we discussed in class about this film. There are certain
explanations that when one analyzes profoundly it clearly shows, such as the influence of
media shown in the movie, as discussed in class the first shots of the film are an
assassination, and the media printing like crazy trying to get the news out faster than the
competition this meant that it was good business, because of this craze everybody wanted to
know what was happening, it is a cruel way of operating but that’s how business works.
That’s why we see a man seeing the killing and taking notes and then running to the phone to
send the information to the newspaper column and make the newspaper and print it out
before morning. This is shown this way in the film thanks to Hitchcock’s analysis of real-life
newspapers, he told that he saw this first hand when an assassination happened in real life of
a wife who killed her husband, and the way the media handled it was similar to how it is
depicted in the film, it seemed like they didn’t care about it and even tried to make it worse
by putting headlines that attracted customers but showed almost no emotion.
5. Discussion formal element & technical element
One formal element that is peculiar at the beginning of the film is the symbol of death, which
was a skull, after the newspaper is printed and sent in the trucks we see the back part of the
truck which had to windows and showed the two operators of the truck but upon further
inspection, it is shown as a skull in the back setting the tone for the whole film, death is what
drives news. This transitions then to the slogan wet from the press, which is a wordplay that
the murder just happened and the ink in the paper hadn’t even dried so everything was
created so fast that these newspapers fed off these catastrophes. All of this together shows the
views and opinions of Hitchcock about media. One last element that seemed to be undetected
but important was when the Lodger is escaping from a lot of people in handcuffs and tries to
get over a fence and gets stuck and stays hanging he seems like he is behind the bars of the
fence which in turn is an allusion to jail, it is shown as if he believes that it is all over and his
good actions are going to take him to jail.

Finally, a technical element I believe is worth mentioning is the masterful camera work
shown in the film, especially with 3 shots. The first one is when the Lodger is leaving his
room and looking up trying to not unsettle anyone in the house, the camera in that part is
tilted upwards showing the influence from German expressionism and this makes the viewer
feel uneasy and shows many gloomy emotions with just one placement of the camera. The
second one is the camera work done when Joe, Daisy and Daisy’s mother are in the room on
the first floor and the Lodger is upstairs walking, it is shown as if they knew exactly how he
was walking and that the floor wasn’t there. This camera work and creativity to create a shot
like this is amazing, it truly resembles the greatness of Hitchcock, because it is such a
creative way to demonstrate the uneasiness inside the characters watching from below and
the feelings the Lodger is feeling. Finally, the shot in which only the Lodgers hand is shown,
and he is walking down the stairs; this shot is made to appear longer than it actually feels
because no one knows where this is going, it is a wonderful shot with a creative camera
placement transmitting so much emotion.

All in all, this movie shows the great start to Hitchcock’s career and I enjoyed it very much.