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Contagion (2013) - To-Night "Golden Curls": Murder and Mimesis in Hitchcock's The Lodger

Details

  • article: To-Night "Golden Curls": Murder and Mimesis in Hitchcock's The Lodger
  • author(s): Sanford Schwartz
  • journal: Contagion (2013)
  • issue: volume 20, issue 1, pages 181-205
  • DOI: 10.1353/ctn.2013.0011
  • journal ISSN: 1075-7201
  • publisher: Michigan State University Press
  • keywords: Motion picture criticism, Violence

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Abstract

Alfred Hitchcock's first cinematic success, The Lodger (1926, silent), provides a case study of contagious violence in the modern metropolis. The film is ostensibly a crime thriller centered on the search for the Avenger, a serial killer modeled on Jack the Ripper. But Hitchcock raises the stakes by introducing a love plot in which the detective and the suspected killer compete for the same woman, who may or may not be the slayer's next target.