New Picture

The Lodger (20th Century-Fox) is a shy, vaseline-voiced neuropathologist (Laird Cregar) who begins to puzzle his landlady (Sara Allgood) when he turns the pictures in his room against the walls. They are all pictures of actresses. The landlady's niece (Merle Oberon) is also an actress; she delights the habitues of London's late 19th Century music halls with her dilutions of the cancan. She wants to divert her aunt's shy lodger too. He is diverted so violently that everybody suddenly realizes that he is Jack the Ripper, the author of the series of murders then terrifying London.

The real Ripper (who was never caught) cut the throats of and expertly mutilated six prostitutes. As fictionized in Mrs. Belloc Lowndes's famed thriller, The Lodger, he was less shocking, was motivated by religious mania. The screen Ripper, derived from Mrs. Lowndes's novel, is even less shocking. In part this is due to the fact that the audience knows from the start that Laird Cregar is the Ripper, so that the suspense is purely academic. In part it is due to the incredible elegance of the production and photography, which makes the whole film more memorable as a museum piece than as a hair-raiser. As a result, several excellent performances, notably those of Laird Cregar, Sir Cedric Hardwicke (as the landlord), Sara Allgood and Merle Oberon, are not as exciting as they should be. Exciting enough is Miss Oberon's cancan (see cut). Notable exception to the general thrillessness is Doris Lloyd as she backs up, shaking and gasping, while the camera, personifying the Ripper, saunters jaggedly toward her into a tremendous close-up of total fear.

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