MovieChat Forums > The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) Discussion > The Lodger - Hitchcock's original ending

The Lodger - Hitchcock's original ending

posted 16 years ago by rexshard93
13 replies | jump to latest

As you all know, Hitchcock originally wanted to put an obscure ending that Ivor Novello is the Avenger. Sadly, the audience refused to accept Ivor Novello as the villain. So they put with a happy ending.

But I think Hitchocck implied throughout the film that Ivor Novello is the villain. For Example, the famous line "Be Careful, I will get you yet."

I don't think there is a single evidence to prove that the Lodger's story about the past is true. Although there is a happy ending to the film, still I think it is an open ending.

[–] FuturePrimitive666 16 years ago

I just finished watching this for the first time. I don't know of any other alternate endings, etc., but I do think that the ending that I viewed is the one Alfred Hitchcock wanted in his film. It can remain open to interpretation whether or not Ivor Novello is indeed the 'Avenger' killer, or whether he was in fact a mourning brother out to find his sister's killer; but, I think the story revolved more around how 'strangers' can be perceived as bad guys, and those we see daily, like the policeman, Joe, we tend to always classify in a good light. Both were vying for the love and attention of the mannequin, June. Joe being a 'man about town', or a 'somebody' feels he is the only proper suitor of June. Whereas, 'Mr. Love-At-First-Sight', Ivor Novello (The Lodger), himself wants her all for his own. So, what's a stranger to do to win the love of someone new in his life? The lodger buys June an expensive dress, one she only dreams about, and one that someone like Joe hadn't even considered buying for her. What then happens? June falls for the lodger, and Joe becomes jealous, so much so, that he is convinced that this new stranger is the 'Avenger' killer that he has just been assigned to search out and arrest before it's too late. This story is simply a love triangle with a twist, one in which Alfred Hitchcock would use and become famous for in many of his later films. Finally, if Ivor Novello were indeed the 'Avenger' killer than this film probably would have been entitled 'The Avenger' and not 'The Lodger'. lol FuturePrimitive666.

"*bleep* it all and *bleep*ing no regrets!"

[–] rexshard93 16 years ago

In Hitchcock/Truffaut Interview, Hitchcock clearly says that he wanted to imply that the lodger might be Jack the Ripper. But the studio refused, because Ivor Novello was a big star.

[–] PoppyTransfusion 12 years ago

The BFI notes for the film including an excerpt of the Truffaut interview implied that a star with good looks could not play the villain on the piece, as Hitchcock originally conceived for the film.

I'm not sure if it would have been better with the Lodger as the Avenger or not. It was a good film anyway with much humour and sinister undertones.

I'm a fountain of blood
In the shape of a girl

[–] Jake_Fratelli 15 years ago

In the novel, the Lodger was the Avenger, and that's how the film was scripted until Novello joined the cast. The romance between June and the Lodger is also manufactured whole cloth -- the Lodger is a recluse in the book who has almost no contact with anyone but the landlady.

When Hitchcock came to Hollywood, he repeatedly tried to sell the studios on a remake which would incorporate the original ending. He was never able to put it together, and eventually Fox did it with John Brahm directing. However, Hitch took many elements of the novel and used them in Shadow of a Doubt, where he did get to use the original ending by having Uncle Charlie be guilty.

*/\*Goonies never say die!*/\*

[–] jtyroler 13 years ago

I haven't read the novel, but the audition broadcast for the long-lasting radio series, "Suspense" (a show called "CBS Forecast") was "The Lodger" directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, starring Herbert Marshall as The Lodger, Edmund Gwynn as Bunting, and Sara Allgood as Mrs. Bunting. Just before the audience thinks they are going to find out that The Lodger is The Avenger, Hitchcock stops the production short and the announcer mentions that it's never disclosed if The Lodger is The Avenger in the original novel. However, that is what one would assume by everything building up to that point in the broadcast.

From Wikipedia: "Alfred Hitchcock directed its audition show (for the CBS summer series Forecast). This was an adaptation of The Lodger a story Hitchcock had filmed in 1926 with Ivor Novello. Martin Grams, Jr., author of Suspense: Twenty Years of Thrills and Chills, described the Forecast origin of Suspense:
On the second presentation of July 22, 1940, Forecast offered a mystery/horror show titled Suspense. With the co-operation of his producer, Walter Wanger, Alfred Hitchcock received the honor of directing his first radio show for the American public. The condition agreed upon for Hitchcock's appearance was that CBS make a pitch to the listening audience about his and Wanger's latest film, Foreign Correspondent. To add flavor to the deal, Wanger threw in Edmund Gwenn and Herbert Marshall as part of the package. All three men (including Hitch) would be seen in the upcoming film, which was due for a theatrical release the next month. Both Marshall and Hitchcock decided on the same story to bring to the airwaves, which happened to be a favorite of both of them: Marie Belloc Lowndes' "The Lodger." Alfred Hitchcock had filmed this story for Gainsborough in 1926, and since then it had remained as one of his favorites.

Herbert Marshall portrayed the mysterious lodger, and co-starring with him were Edmund Gwenn and character actress Lurene Tuttle as the rooming-house keepers who start to suspect that their new boarder might be the notorious Jack-the-Ripper. [Gwenn was actually repeating the role taken in the 1926 film by his brother, Arthur Chesney. And Tuttle would work again with Hitchcock nearly 20 years later, playing Mrs. Al Chambers in Psycho.] Character actor Joseph Kearns also had a small part in the drama, and Wilbur Hatch, head musician for CBS Radio at the time, composed and conducted the music specially for the program. Adapting the script to radio was not a great technical challenge for Hitchcock, and he cleverly decided to hold back the ending of the story from the listening audience in order to keep them in suspense themselves. This way, if the audience's curiosity got the better of them, they would write in to the network to find out whether the mysterious lodger was in fact Jack the Ripper. For the next few weeks, hundreds of letters came in from faithful listeners asking how the story ended. Actually a few wrote threats claiming that it was "indecent" and "immoral" to present such a production without giving the solution."

"The Lodger" was also done by Peter Lorre for his Mystery on the Air summer radio series with Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Bunting. In that version, The Lodger is The Avenger and accidentally kills himself when trying to kill Daisy in some pseudo-religious sacrifice.

Both are available at www.archive.org - good introductions to Old Time Radio.

[–] admuz 15 years ago

I watched the film for the first time today, not knowing the plot or any of the analysis that has been done into the film. When I saw the ending I immediately took it to be ambiguous because of the "Tonight Golden Curls" sign flashing in the background during the final scene of The Lodger and Daisy. Surely this suggests The Lodger IS The Avenger and he is going to kill her later that night?

However having now done some research into the film it seems that critics and film experts have decided The Lodger is innocent! I don't understand this - how can the significance of the sign in the last scene of the film have been missed by so many people? Or am I reading too much into it??

[–] franzkabuki 15 years ago

If The Lodger weren´t The Avenger, the story would be dramatically rather weak -
it´s built up as a suspense flick, but all we get in the end is that Lodger was NOT the bad guy, as the culprit turns out to be someone not even in the story, never seen or heard of in the film. Definitely this isn´t the kinda movie to go out with such a whimper... so it makes perfect sense that the source book has The Lodger as the killer (witholding the romance - as it was absent in the book - would also had been a good idea probably). So I guess it´s a good thing we at least have that flashing sign to suggest the ending may not be quite that happy after all.

[–] rooprect 15 years ago

The drama is not necessarily that the Lodger is the Avenger but that there is some (sinister?) connection between the two. If he were outright the Avenger, to me that's where the suspense would fall flat, because from his 1st appearance that's what we're led to believe. There would be no mystery.

Hitchcock was more devious than that. In his films if you feel like you're being led somewhere, chances are it's a ruse. In this case he leads us to think the Lodger is the Avenger for the first hour, but then he twists it with a clever & believeable explanation (that the Lodger is an obsessed vigilante hunting the Avenger). I think that works brilliantly.

The question remains: is there a 2ND twist that he is in fact the Avenger? Now that would really be Hitchcock's style. As others have stated, the studio nixed the idea. That to me is where the story ends weak, because we get a 5 minute epilogue that essentially says nothing. I was waiting for the punchline--perhaps that the obsessed vigilante, in madness & frustration, had become a killer himself (doesn't Basic Instinct end somewhat on a note like that?). That would've been a twist worthy of the master.

While I can "feel" the original intent of the book, the film itself reeks of studio meddling & the quintessential Hollywood ending. It would've been great if Hitchy's original director's cut were preserved somewhere.

[–] stargazer1701-1 15 years ago

The sign at the end "Tonight, Golden Curls" could have been flashing because some one forgot to update the evening news. Perhaps the townsfolk were celebrating the capture of the Aveneger that they left the sign flashing in as an effigy. The last time we see it, it is in the distance, through a window and behind Ivor which has a composition suggesting that it’s over, it’s distant and it’s all behind them now.

Frankly, I enjoyed the ‘happy ending’.

Smoke me a kipper. I’ll be back for breakfast

[–] genplant29 13 years ago

See my more detailed reply to "admuz" of a few minutes ago. The flashing "Tonight, Golden Curls" sign way off in the distance, at the end, as well as that appears closer up early in the film, actually has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the murders, but was simply the advertising sign for a popular entertainment show, maybe like a musical revue or something like that. It wasn't, at all, ever a news sign pertaining to the "Avenger" murders. "Tonight, Golden Curls" meant that the play or other type production, titled "Golden Curls," was being performed tonight.

[–] genplant29 13 years ago

I either read somewhere, or saw in one of the extras on the superb 2008 MGM DVD release of this movie, that the flashing "Tonight, Golden Curls" sign way off in the distance, at the end, as well as that appears closer up early in the film, actually has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the murders, but was simply the advertising sign for a popular entertainment show, maybe like a musical revue or something like that. It wasn't, at all, ever a news sign pertaining to the "Avenger" murders. I can't recall if what I read or perhaps saw in a DVD extra mentioned that "Golden Curls," as mentioned on the flashing sign, was the name of a fictitious (strictly a title created for the sake of the movie [possibly also mentioned in the book the film was based upon]) entertainment production or the name of some actual show that maybe was popularly running back then. At any rate, "Tonight, Golden Curls" meant that the play or other type production, titled "Golden Curls," was being performed tonight. Of course, we, in modern times, would have no way of knowing that if this authoritative source or that didn't tell us so, since the sign does give the clear impression of referring to the "Avenger" murders.

[–] Bree_33 12 years ago

This is an excerpt from an essay: [SFU Library]

The lodger explains in flashback that the picture found in his bag was indeed of his murdered sister, the Avenger’s first victim. He recounts how his mother, who never recovered from the shock of her daughter’s death, extracted a promise from him on her deathbed that he would not rest until the Avenger had been brought to justice. The map and press clippings are merely the tools he has assembled in his hunt for his killer’s sister; the gun, apparently, the tool by which he intended to satisfy his mother’s wish. He may not be a killer, but the lodger’s heart has been blackened by his planning for murder. Now suspected of being the Avenger himself, the lodger laments that his promise must go unfulfilled, and he virtually collapses in Daisy’s arms.

Much has been made of the flashback sequence, including Rothman’s (1982) observation that in the flashback, the lodger does not appear after the opening moments in which he is shown dancing with his sister at her coming-out ball. The lodger’s absence throughout the flashback may be explained as a consequence of Hitchcock’s desire to continue the possibility that the lodger is really the murderer. In this respect, the lodger’s absence may be a further instance of the director working his manipulations upon an unsuspecting audience. It is also noteworthy that the flashback, which is told from the lodger’s perspective, includes subtle details that only the killer would know. For instance, there is a shot of a gloved hand turning off the lights moments before the murder occurs, an image only the killer would see in the way it is presented in the flashback. Given that the flashback is told from the lodger’s subjective position, and given that that perspective coincides with what we imagine the killer’s view would have been, it then seems that the lodger and the Avenger are the same person. In spite of the story’s conclusion, therefore, Rothman argues that the lodger might still be the killer after all.

More pedestrian explanations, however, are also possible. The gloved hand turning off the light, from a technical standpoint, is impossible. Ivor Montagu, who helped Hitchcock with editing the film, admits that the shot was disconcerting because it showed the hand turn off the lights a second before the lights actually went out. Impossible in reality, but necessary in cinematic terms. Hence it does not seem profitable to attempt as literalist a reading of the film’s flashback as Rothman suggests, for otherwise we would be forced to deal with the more surreal qualities demanded by Hitchcock’s cinematic methods as though they could be accounted for in strictly objective terms. Moreover, because several scenes were reshot after Hitchcock completed the film, continuity may have suffered as a result. Mr. Bunting’s absence from the lodger’s room at the scene of Joe and the lodger’s first confrontation is another example of a major character’s absence being unaccountable by the narrative logic of the film. In any event, and despite Hitchcock’s subsequent tampering with the flashback convention in Stage Fright, it seems most likely that we are to take the lodger’s account of his sister’s murder at face value. Flashbacks in film - again, excepting for the moment the aberration of Stage Fright - have the truth status of objectively grounded realism. I do not believe that the flashback sequence in The Lodger bespeaks more or less than this.

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[–] udippel 11 years ago

Be it as it is described in here, and that Hitchcock wanted The Lodger to be the Avenger; I for one didn't like the epilogue, but: and this is a big but, I would have loathed if he had been the Avenger. From the whole outset, in this movie it would have been too clear-cut. If not boring.
Hitchcock is good for surprises, not a straight forward build-up of sinister image until everything pans out as everyone always expected.

At least in the version that I saw, it was clearly said "Avenger caught red-handed". Could have hardly been the lodger. Out and over. And the story about the sister being murdered and the mother dying from grief, it is unlikely that the lodger could have fabricated those, neither his wealth. In the end we witness the lodger in his house. Out and over.
The version that I just watched was clear on the lodger not being the avenger. Finished.