This week I saw a Hitchcock film I actually liked - his first, The Lodger, or, A Story of the London Fog, with a live score improvised by Minima. The story is based on the Jack the Ripper murders, and concerns a mysterious "lodger" whom, we begin to suspect, has some very interesting nocturnal activities. There will be spoilers below, but for this very rare silent film you are never going to see. So I advise you keep reading.
I adored it, start to finish, but my feelings exploded into a bit of a wordvomit, part justification and part exploration revolving around Jack the Ripper. My least favourite obsession - I know, in part, where it came from, but I'm not particularly proud of it. The way I see it is: at least I'm honest. And it's not so much the history that fascinates me, as the way the world at large has attempted to make their obsession reasonable. And it's this in turn, I like to tell myself, that makes my interest acceptable. All those ideas are coming out in a splurged, tinged with the reek of academese, but do try and keep up as I think I'm attempting to say something valuable.
There are no footnotes because these are all my ideas, but you can take it as given that many of them have been expressed more eloquently by people with careers.
People love nosying into violent murder. It's hidden between the respectable sheets of the "London Lite", or made "OK" by the ten o'clock news - but secretly, everyone is fascinated. The interesting thing about Jack is the way this fascination is allowed to be public. There are Ripperology conventions, and the fella's had cameos on Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Smallville, X-Men - even a namecheck in Doctor Who - in a way I can't see Ed Geind doing any time soon.
It's an example of cinema (and more widely, of course, fiction) mediating images and making it "safe". Smoking looks pretty cool on screen, so do car chases, gunfights and all sorts of behavior we should find reprehensible. Another example would be how we can watch the news impassively, almost on autopilot, without engaging with the reality of any of the stories. Poor Saucy Jack has been mediated in this way for a good century now - we are safe from engaging with the real life corpses of five real, dead women because he has been made successively more fictional, more and more safe.
One example of the "fictionalisation" process is the use of Ripperologist terminology. Those five victims are popularly referred to as the "canonical" five, to separate them from other deaths attributed to him (sometimes up to 20). But the use of the word "canonical" is telling - a word which means not only correct, but someone has decided its correct. An aspect of fiction - someone has decided how we're going to pass this story down. Medea kills her children, and all pre-Euripidean versions where the kids make it are non-canonical.
Of course, there's time and decency. And all serial killers go through a version of this - because we are also piecing them together from news reports - but because Mr Jack remained a mystery, there's room for us to write whatever we like straight over the top of him. The Jack we have is a heavily romanticised figure: The Lodger portrays him as beautiful and sad - Gotham by Gaslight makes him maladjusted, but intelligent. This is another way of rendering him "safe" - as Oscar Wilde puts it, "we praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. "
The looping together of history and fiction finds it's home in the Gothic Horror genre, and so he inherits many of the vampire traits. Dangerous, but also sexy - aristocratic - villainous, but on some level a heroic social rebel. The Lodger in particular portrays him with waxy pale skin and a huge black cloak, while Anno Dracula reveals he is actually Jack Seward of the original novel. Dracula. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story melanges him with that other great Victorian Gothic figure - as does Exit Sherlock Holmes. The animated Van Helsing preview also takes Jack on - this time, he's actually Mr Hyde. You can bet he's in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen too. Magic and sorcery get their turn also- From Hell figures him as a Freemason trying to...do whatever Freemasons do, Matrix is using the killings to power some sort of super-magic-McGuffin, and Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper has them as an attempt at immortality (more of that later). He's mixed up with Crippen, Spring Heeled Jack and Sweeney Todd - appropriately, those three figures are in turn are real, sort-of real and fictional.
So he also gets constructed as part of the archetypal Gothic-Victorian landscape: taxidermy, heavy mahogany, gas lights, cobbles, shadows, and in particular, fog. The Lodger is subtitled "a Story of the Londern Fog", as if the fog were somehow implicated in all that ripping - similarly the Buffy the Vampire novel which takes him on is called "Blood and Fog". In the Doctor Who novel Matrix, the Fog decends when Jack does. The novel is set in an alternate London where the killings never stopped, ultimately plunging the country into chaos as the paranoia and killing turn into a sort of epidemic:
The lingering spectre is a powerful image, because it's not altogether incorrect. The fascination hasn't left. Perhaps it's the draw of an unsolved mystery. That's the significance of the fact he was never caught, nor even found - because he hasn't left either. Those novels with immortality attempts are perhaps deeper than they intended to be. Certainly, he's been regarded as the father of the modern serial killer (more because he was the first to be widely reported by a hysterical Victorian newspaper machine). From Hell gives Jack an out-of-body experience through time, where his spirit literally inspires Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Brady and William Blake.
And much like Matrix, From Hell at one point claims that he kickstarted the entire 20th century, and was the culmination of the Victorian period. "Jack" says:
I mean, for goodness sake! Remember what we are actually talking about: one very pathetic fella who diced five women in gory detail. Yet the cling he has on the popular imagination is immense - he was voted "The Worst Briton in History" - when we can'tt even know for sure if he is a Brit.
Ah, all I want is half a year to construct a proper essay on this theme!
As for the film.
I had suspected from the start that the Generic Production Code Thingy would impact the movie's ending. I can't recall exactly what the rules were in 20s Britain, but I assumed it would be similar to America's of the same time. Bad must be punished, and the audience's sympathy must not be with crime. The downbeat ending is a relatively new innovation in screen terms.
In actual fact, the Lodger cops out not once but twice. Our Jack can't get away with it, and is inevitably caught by the police. But then, in a second startling twist, we discover that he's not guilty at all but is an innocent party also tracking the Avenger. Which is pretty limp and unexpected given what's gone before. But by the time this is revealed, the damage has been done. You've already had the thrill factor of seeing a beautiful girl seduced by a monster - the "spectacle", if you like - and of sympathising with a vicious killer, because it's been so heavily hinted it is him throughout. The Lodger has as good as done the crimes - or, by the end of the movie, it doens't matter that he hasn't. It may as well have been him. The shock twist almost makes it all more obvious. IMDb confirms what I'd already guessed: Hitchcock wanted an ambiguous ending to the film, but the studio wouldn't allow it to be implied that the lodger might actually be the murderer. I still think it's pretty ambiguous, or perhaps I just wanted it to be. There are also strong overlaps with Psycho - blondes in bathtubs, rented rooms as dangerous spaces, or spaces disjointed from conventional morality, not to mention twisted sexuality and an innocent on the run.
Innocent. Pah.
A good essay on the Lodger is here:http://www.cinemademerde.com/Essay-Lodger_Hitchcocks_First_Film.shtml
I adored it, start to finish, but my feelings exploded into a bit of a wordvomit, part justification and part exploration revolving around Jack the Ripper. My least favourite obsession - I know, in part, where it came from, but I'm not particularly proud of it. The way I see it is: at least I'm honest. And it's not so much the history that fascinates me, as the way the world at large has attempted to make their obsession reasonable. And it's this in turn, I like to tell myself, that makes my interest acceptable. All those ideas are coming out in a splurged, tinged with the reek of academese, but do try and keep up as I think I'm attempting to say something valuable.
There are no footnotes because these are all my ideas, but you can take it as given that many of them have been expressed more eloquently by people with careers.
People love nosying into violent murder. It's hidden between the respectable sheets of the "London Lite", or made "OK" by the ten o'clock news - but secretly, everyone is fascinated. The interesting thing about Jack is the way this fascination is allowed to be public. There are Ripperology conventions, and the fella's had cameos on Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Smallville, X-Men - even a namecheck in Doctor Who - in a way I can't see Ed Geind doing any time soon.
It's an example of cinema (and more widely, of course, fiction) mediating images and making it "safe". Smoking looks pretty cool on screen, so do car chases, gunfights and all sorts of behavior we should find reprehensible. Another example would be how we can watch the news impassively, almost on autopilot, without engaging with the reality of any of the stories. Poor Saucy Jack has been mediated in this way for a good century now - we are safe from engaging with the real life corpses of five real, dead women because he has been made successively more fictional, more and more safe.
One example of the "fictionalisation" process is the use of Ripperologist terminology. Those five victims are popularly referred to as the "canonical" five, to separate them from other deaths attributed to him (sometimes up to 20). But the use of the word "canonical" is telling - a word which means not only correct, but someone has decided its correct. An aspect of fiction - someone has decided how we're going to pass this story down. Medea kills her children, and all pre-Euripidean versions where the kids make it are non-canonical.
Of course, there's time and decency. And all serial killers go through a version of this - because we are also piecing them together from news reports - but because Mr Jack remained a mystery, there's room for us to write whatever we like straight over the top of him. The Jack we have is a heavily romanticised figure: The Lodger portrays him as beautiful and sad - Gotham by Gaslight makes him maladjusted, but intelligent. This is another way of rendering him "safe" - as Oscar Wilde puts it, "we praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. "
The looping together of history and fiction finds it's home in the Gothic Horror genre, and so he inherits many of the vampire traits. Dangerous, but also sexy - aristocratic - villainous, but on some level a heroic social rebel. The Lodger in particular portrays him with waxy pale skin and a huge black cloak, while Anno Dracula reveals he is actually Jack Seward of the original novel. Dracula. The Last Sherlock Holmes Story melanges him with that other great Victorian Gothic figure - as does Exit Sherlock Holmes. The animated Van Helsing preview also takes Jack on - this time, he's actually Mr Hyde. You can bet he's in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen too. Magic and sorcery get their turn also- From Hell figures him as a Freemason trying to...do whatever Freemasons do, Matrix is using the killings to power some sort of super-magic-McGuffin, and Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper has them as an attempt at immortality (more of that later). He's mixed up with Crippen, Spring Heeled Jack and Sweeney Todd - appropriately, those three figures are in turn are real, sort-of real and fictional.
So he also gets constructed as part of the archetypal Gothic-Victorian landscape: taxidermy, heavy mahogany, gas lights, cobbles, shadows, and in particular, fog. The Lodger is subtitled "a Story of the Londern Fog", as if the fog were somehow implicated in all that ripping - similarly the Buffy the Vampire novel which takes him on is called "Blood and Fog". In the Doctor Who novel Matrix, the Fog decends when Jack does. The novel is set in an alternate London where the killings never stopped, ultimately plunging the country into chaos as the paranoia and killing turn into a sort of epidemic:
"Following the Ripper murders, the citizens of London rose up against the authorities who were unable to protect them, and a period of civil unrest followed. Then, during World War One, rumours of atrocities drifted back from the front lines -- and when the shell-shocked veterans returned, something evil returned with them. Ever since, London has been under siege from the walking dead, social order has broken down, and gangs of youths who worship Jack as the new Messiah roam the streets. The Americans took control after the war with Hitler and put London under quarantine, but all they've done is contain the problem"Army crackdowns, Jacksprites everywhere, zombies and rationing. And fog, lots of fog: in the universe where Jack's spectre never left, neither did the Fog.
The lingering spectre is a powerful image, because it's not altogether incorrect. The fascination hasn't left. Perhaps it's the draw of an unsolved mystery. That's the significance of the fact he was never caught, nor even found - because he hasn't left either. Those novels with immortality attempts are perhaps deeper than they intended to be. Certainly, he's been regarded as the father of the modern serial killer (more because he was the first to be widely reported by a hysterical Victorian newspaper machine). From Hell gives Jack an out-of-body experience through time, where his spirit literally inspires Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Brady and William Blake.
And much like Matrix, From Hell at one point claims that he kickstarted the entire 20th century, and was the culmination of the Victorian period. "Jack" says:
And Alan Moore says:"It is beginning, Netley. Only just beginning. For better or worse, the twentieth century. I have delivered it."
"the Ripper murders — happening when they did and where they did — were almost like an apocalyptic summary of... that entire Victorian age."
I mean, for goodness sake! Remember what we are actually talking about: one very pathetic fella who diced five women in gory detail. Yet the cling he has on the popular imagination is immense - he was voted "The Worst Briton in History" - when we can'tt even know for sure if he is a Brit.
Ah, all I want is half a year to construct a proper essay on this theme!
As for the film.
I had suspected from the start that the Generic Production Code Thingy would impact the movie's ending. I can't recall exactly what the rules were in 20s Britain, but I assumed it would be similar to America's of the same time. Bad must be punished, and the audience's sympathy must not be with crime. The downbeat ending is a relatively new innovation in screen terms.
In actual fact, the Lodger cops out not once but twice. Our Jack can't get away with it, and is inevitably caught by the police. But then, in a second startling twist, we discover that he's not guilty at all but is an innocent party also tracking the Avenger. Which is pretty limp and unexpected given what's gone before. But by the time this is revealed, the damage has been done. You've already had the thrill factor of seeing a beautiful girl seduced by a monster - the "spectacle", if you like - and of sympathising with a vicious killer, because it's been so heavily hinted it is him throughout. The Lodger has as good as done the crimes - or, by the end of the movie, it doens't matter that he hasn't. It may as well have been him. The shock twist almost makes it all more obvious. IMDb confirms what I'd already guessed: Hitchcock wanted an ambiguous ending to the film, but the studio wouldn't allow it to be implied that the lodger might actually be the murderer. I still think it's pretty ambiguous, or perhaps I just wanted it to be. There are also strong overlaps with Psycho - blondes in bathtubs, rented rooms as dangerous spaces, or spaces disjointed from conventional morality, not to mention twisted sexuality and an innocent on the run.
Innocent. Pah.
A good essay on the Lodger is here:http://www.cinemademerde.com/Essay-Lodger_Hitchcocks_First_Film.shtml
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