Suspense: "The Manxman" and "The Lodger"

Alfred Hitchcock's silent film The Manxman is the second silent film I have watched; the first one was The Lodger. Before the context of this class, I never took the idea of silent films or watching silent films seriously. I always dismissed these films because of the lack of language and dialogue. Due to the lack of words and dialogue, I was not engaged with the film. However, after watching these two films, my thinking has shifted. I have been quite intrigued with how silent films work and how to interpret them. Rather than trying to listen to what the characters are trying to say, I am able to visually understand what they are saying and am able to physically see how Hitchcock portrays these silent conversation into his films.

One of the many reasons why Hitchcock is so successful in both his early silent films and the films later in his career is due to his creation of suspense. Suspense is a reoccurring trend that I have seen in each one of his films. If a film is considered to be "Hitchcockian" then it must have a component of suspense.

The suspense Hitchcock creates stirs up the many emotions within his audience. Suspense causes the audience to feel anxious, excitement, tension, etc. These feelings of suspense continuously keep the audience drawn into film. Suspense is a pleasurable feeling. Therefore, suspense keeps the audience wanting more.

There are many ways in which Hitchcock incorporates suspense into his films. Some of the ways in which he does so is through the story/plot, placing an ordinary character into an extraordinary situation, the variety of characters he uses- sociopaths, psychopaths, villainous characters, the innocent character, etc., or in general, suspicious characters, the use of trains, silent scenes, the sounds used in the scenes,  and the camera shots. These are only a few of the ways in which he builds suspense.

The overarching theme of this blog is going to explore and examine the ways in which Hitchcock has used suspense in his films.

This first blog is going to start with his an analysis of his silent films.

The Manxman creates and builds suspense. One of the central ways is the plot. A man has a successful, wealthy best friend. The man who is not as successful wants to marry a woman of middle class. His father will not marry his daughter to a man who is penniless. In order to marry the love of his life, he agrees to get the daughter to wait for him while he goes to Africa to become wealthy enough to marry her. He asks his best friend to watch over her while he is gone. While the man is gone, his best friend and the woman fall in love. They want to get married. However, the man from Africa comes back successful and the woman's father wants the two to get married. The two get married, the man not knowing his love's affection for his best friend. While married, the woman is unhappy and has an affair with his best friend. She gets pregnant, has the child. Lies to her husband that the child his and then leaves him with the child. The woman tries to kill herself and is then placed on trial in a courtroom. The suspense between the main man, his best friend, Kate and Kate's father is heightened. The moment in the courtroom is climax where the story unfolds and both audiences, (watching the film and those in the courtroom) are aware of what has happened.

The image below is Kate in the courtroom waiting to be tried for her crime of suicide attempt.

Compared to many of Hitchcock's other films, The Manxman is not a very suspenseful film. It is more plot driven. Throughout the film, the audience keeps asking the question will the story unravel and the man find out that his wife is in love with another man and he is not the father of the child. That is what drives the suspense throughout the film.

The Lodger creates suspense in many different ways. At the beginning of the film, a murder happens and a stranger is seen dressed in a long trench coat, scarf, and a black top hat, similar attire to that of murderer. Suspense is built when a mysterious man appears out of the fog and stays with a family. The newspaper articles that keep reappearing with snippets of the murders throughout the film also draw in suspense. The mysterious actions of the man such as flipping over the portraits of the blonde woman over, having a photo of the first woman murdered in the crimes, and his map of the murders, similar to that of the police officers builds suspense and indicates that he could possibly be the murderer.

The photo above is the mysterious man stepping from outside of the fog into the lodge where he will be temporarily staying. The audience has no idea who this man is, which makes it even more suspenseful.

The films used in this blog are two examples of how suspense is incorporated into his films in different ways. Each film is different, therefore when suspense works for one film will not work for the other.