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The startling overture kicks off on a touch of Munch (the first victim in backlit close-up) and travels from the murmurs of witnesses to the newspaper machinery, dread infecting the air. The killer has a triangular calling card and favors fair-haired maidens ("No more peroxide for yours truly!"), though the sense of geometry isn't stated until the detective (Malcolm Keen) announces the link between the noose ready for the culprit and the engagement ring saved for his fiancée (June Tripp). Subjective tracking shot at the door of Boarding House 13, half-obscured figure out of the mist, thus the new tenant (Ivor Novello). Portraits of women are removed from his room, the chandelier rattles from the constant pacing on the second floor. "Even if he's a bit queer, he's a gentleman." Alfred Hitchcock's "story of the London fog" is no whodunit—the mystery is resolved off-screen, all the better to focus on the Germanic themes of beauty protected and destroyed. The landlady (Marie Ault) is suspicious and, in a whiff of Rear Window and Psycho, ventures into the darkened chamber while a potential murderer lurks by. (More Psycho: The anguished protagonist on one side of the wall, on the other the blonde heroine in a bathtub.) A world of shadows and staircases and manacles, where death arrives at a debutante's ball with the flip of a light switch. Yet how dreary "normalcy" is, and how closely the fear of the unknown goes together with the yearning to step inside the beast's lair. The danger and desire of "tempting providence," brought together in a Calvary of handcuffs, iron gates, and a glance of clemency exchanged in the midst of a bloodthirsty mob. A template for Magritte (L'Empire des Lumières), a line of thought pursued all the way to Frenzy. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |