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.