Week 1 blog 1 The Lodger

In Alfred Hitchcock's film The Lodger, it is interesting to see that it is a black and white silent film, the contrast of black and white are high meaning it is a high contrasting movie. The quality and focus are not as good for it is a old movie and there is no audio or color to help make it easier to understand what is going on in the film. From what I remember is that "The Avenger" is the serial killer making his prey on women. Hitchcock is very well known to depict this type of plot where the women fall victim to men, in a world where the women never triumph or possess power as much as men and basically put, the women always die. In 5:42 the word "murder" is flashing across the screen, being emphasized that there is a killer out on the loose and that in fact a murder has been committed, on the bottom right hand side we see the words "wet from the press" and as we all know, media attention brings forth the thought that it is a serious matter and the public needs to know and be aware of it. In 46:00-46:16 the woman is sitting next to the man who's suspicious gaze draw attention that he is indeed The Avenger or it can also indicate that he wants to become The Avenger. The man lights her cigarette without even looking at her, that is a little suspicious and his gaze is locking in (seems focused) on the show and does not want to lose sight of it. In scene 55:27 the camera in fixated on one particular side of the room, not centered but a little to the left. The angle is right and enhances the scene when the scene opens with dark room being lighted by light. This can symbolize that something is coming to an end like a resolution has almost been made. In scenes 1:03:9-1:03:12 we see flashback and flashforward being used as the scenes jump from one pair of characters to the next and it goes back and forth and the transition is quite fast too. The author is trying to get the audience to see or make a connection to something for better understanding of who The Avenger is and or what is going on. The camera technique also lets us infer that when there is passion in a scene that is upcoming they camera automatically zooms in on the faces as in the case of 1:03:15-1:03:43. What I found interesting was also in 1:07:55 the detectives discover a bag and the expression on his face seems shocked, like he did not expect it to be there, totally caught him off guard and makes him very suspicious. They are accusing him of being The Avenger and this scene had me confused because I did not know who to believe, but overall I thought it was an interesting film.