Sabotage/The Lodger

Starring:Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, Reginald Gardiner, Eve Gray, June, Malcolm Keen, Ivor Novello
Studio: Delta
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
As Germany infiltrates England with plans to blow up key installations, the Brits spare no effort to trap the Nazis before they can complete their mission. In The Lodger, evidence indicates that the new lodger may be the notorious Jack The Ripper.

Includes an intro by Tony Curtis and the trailer for Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent".

Menus: English  Spanish  Chinese  Japanese
Subtitles: Spanish  Chinese  Japanese

Description

As Germany infiltrates England with plans to blow up key installations, the Brits spare no effort to trap the Nazis before they can complete their mission. In The Lodger, evidence indicates that the new lodger may be the notorious Jack The Ripper.

Includes an intro by Tony Curtis and the trailer for Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent".

Menus: English • Spanish • Chinese • Japanese
Subtitles: Spanish • Chinese • Japanese

B&W/159 min.

Customer Reviews:

It was the start of what came to be known as "the Hitchcock touch...".......2007-01-07

The start of a film: the head of a girl in close-up... She is very blonde, and her fair curls fill the screen... She is screaming... Cut to a theater sign, announcing a show called "Tonight, Golden Curls." The lights of the sign are reflected in water... From that water the golden-curled girl is pulled to land... She is no longer screaming... She is dead... Murdered!

That scene was more than the start of a film... It was the start of what came to be known as "the Hitchcock touch" and, because of that, it was also the real start of suspense films in England...

The year was 1927 and the film was "The Lodger."

There had been British suspense films before that... Alfred Hitchcock had directed films before that... But from the first moment of "The Lodger" there was apparent an imaginative authority in the creation of thrillers that was to grow into the greatest professionalism the genre has known throughout Hitchcock's career... It is a pity that it did not begin to grow so lavishly throughout the whole British film industry until many years later...

"The Lodger," based on a novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, was set in a Jack the Ripper-type murder wave in a foggy London... The victims were always blonde girls, always murdered on the same day of the week...

While the whole capital speculates in panic, a new lodger turns up at a quiet boarding house... He wears a black cloak and carries a black bag...

There are other details which cause the finger of suspicion to tremble towards him ... so is he or isn't he the mass-murderer? Well, you have to see the movie, and to follow a theme that was to dominate many of Hitchcock's later films: the innocent man wrongly accused...

Terrorism affects everyone.......2006-03-15

Hitchcock's Sabotage is an important film for our times as well as the late 1930's in which it premiered. A group of Nazi terrorists are working within England in the days immediately preceeding WWII. One of these is the small cinema owner Verloc whose involvement at the beginning of the film is limited to the nonviolent shutdown of a power station. Later he is tasked with delivering a bomb to Picadilly Circus. This plot goes terribly wrong and a family member is killed.

The disc I viewed is by Laserlight and was not terribly good. The image and sound quality were poor but this was to be expected from such a low priced offering. The upside is that one gets to view an early film by Hitchcock that is not well known and generally available. It would be great if a better transfer were made available for some of these earlier works but this one is well worth checking out.

It Launched Hitchcock's Career.......2005-06-14

The Lodger was wonderful - it established Hitch's flair for visual imagery and proved how a story could be told without words.

Like Gloria Swanson once said, "Who needs dialogue? We had...faces."

Note Ivor Novello's face as he's being pursued by an angry mob. It's expressive without ever being "over the top." And Hitch's vigorous and innovative camera work make it all the better.

You'll love it, and they're practically giving it away here...

Two Hitchcock classics on a decent dvd........2005-04-11

"Sabotage" is one of Hitchcock's early British efforts and thus it has the cinematic sensibility that he retained at that time in most of his British films, which is an experimental, adventurous approach that resulted in numerous, visually innovative films. The film is suspensful, typically ahead of its time and visually stylish, but suffers from the tonal inconsistencies that plagued Hitchcock's films at that time (priror to him finding his true narrative style in the 40's), but still has many ingenious visual moments and suspense sequences. "The Lodger" which Hitchcock considered to be his first film (although it wasn't) due to it being the first film that really showed his style and individuality, is nothing less than a silent masterpiece of suspense cinema, featuring exquisite expressionistic compositions and several plot and visual motifs that would later become the key ingredients of Hitchcock's unparalleled style and brand of cinema. The Laserlight dvd is a very recommended buy as it features a good print of "Sabotage", with nice contrast and acceptable sound, while it also features a watchable print of "The Lodger" (considering the film's age) as an extra as well as the trailer for "Foreign correspondent". All this makes this dvd an almost unmissable, value package for fans of classic cinema and of course for fans of one of cinema's most important innovators.

Great film, nice price.......2004-04-02

This is a great early Hitchcock film. The suspense is great. The editing and cinematography are classic Hitchcock. The opening of the movie is great with the jump cuts and the montage squence of the London blackout.

Amazon.com

Essentially a one-joke story line based on Eden Philpotts's comic play, the 1928 silent film The Farmer's Wife makes up for its lack of substantive material with a noticeable leap in Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic skills. Jameson Thomas stars as a rustic farmer named Sweetland whose recently deceased wife has left a hole in his home and life. The subsequent marriage of his daughter inspires Sweetland to contemplate the altar again, and he enlists the aid of his lovely housekeeper, Minta (Lillian Hall-Davies), to draw up a list of available if ill-considered candidates. One by one, Sweetland proposes to the ladies and is rebuffed, then huffs his way home to a warm reception by the woman he should obviously be with: Minta. In almost anyone else's hands, this slight and silly tale would instantly evaporate, but Hitchcock takes it as an opportunity to make a lively, good-looking film full of delightful transitions (this is the kind of movie where a wordless exchanged glance leads us from one world and into another), at least one early experiment with a rapid dolly shot (all roads lead to Vertigo, don't you know), and a remarkable amount of suggestively grim humor. One paving stone on the path to Hitchcock's full, brilliant career, The Farmer's Wife reveals a great talent still growing. Tom Keogh

Description

7 DVD SET INCLUDES:
Sabotage
The Lodger
Blackmail
Easy Virtue
Rich and Strange
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
The Farmer's Wife
Murder!
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Lady Vanishes

B&W/826 min.

Customer Reviews:

A very young promise in progress!.......2007-03-09

Believe or not, this is a slapstick comedy, in spite of the fact we are talking about an early Hitchcock. The dramatis personae turns round a humble farmer who seeks desperately a bride after his wife has died. He doesn't seem to realize his housekeeper is in love with him since a long time. A very interesting proposal of a director in progress by then.

Strictly for the Film Historians.......2006-08-30

OK, let's get this over with; none of us would even consider watching this movie if it weren't for the fact that it was directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, it's doubtful that the movie would have even survived into the 21st Century if it weren't for the director who was to go on to much greater heights. Yet Hitchcock WAS the director and we KNOW he was a masterful director so he must have done a GREAT job, right? Well, not really. I found myself interested somewhat in "The Farmer's Wife" because there is a fair amount of humor in it. I don't know if I laughed out loud but I smiled a few times. I considered asking my wife to waych it and see if she thought I'd end up the same way. However, the one real problem with this movie is that it is TOO long. Frankly, I breathed a sigh of relief when I thought the movie was over. "Maybe it wasn't all that long afterall" I told myself. Yet when the film actually did end about 10 minutes after I thought it would, I had to admit, a lot of it belong on the film editor's floor. For the record, this is a silent movie (Hitchcock directed England's first "talkie" shortly after he made "The Farmer's Wife"). Silent movies need good expressive acting to succeed and I felt that this movie had that. It was proably it's stregth (along with the humor). It's the story of a widower who decides he'll take another wife and how he is angered when his choice of spouse isn't receptive to the idea. He goes through several disappointments all seemingly in the same day before he discovers the obvious choice.

I got this movie as part of an "Early Hitchcock" set. In that sense, I have no qualms that I bought the DVD. I would have been disappointed to have bought this by itself. I liked it well enough but I doubt (due to its' length) that I'll ever watch it again.

Wrong running time.......2001-01-22

Even though the film originally ran about 97 minutes, and even though Amazon's info shows the running time to be 93 minutes, this Laserlight's DVD version of THE FARMER'S WIFE runs 129 minutes. Apparently, the wrong film speed was used in transferring the film to DVD, stretching the film by an additional half hour. The film's tempo is therefore slowed down a great deal, and the pacing and timing of the various comedy scenes are very much ruined. The DVD does have decent picture and sound (mono) quality.

This dated and predictable film was nevertheless well-acted by Jameson Thomas as the farmer and Lillian Hall-Davis as his housekeeper. Hall-Davis also starred in another Hitchcock's silent comedy "The Ring" (a much better film), also available as a Laserlight DVD.

Imperdible..........2000-09-25

En esta era de la tecnología y el gusto por lograr las mejores imágenes y los mejores efectos, esta colección nos lleva a darnos cuenta que las grandes obras de arte se deben edificar a partir de eso, "El Arte". Y esto es precisamente lo que demuestra este box set. El arte de la cinematografía puesta en las manos del genial Hitchcock. Ni que hablar de la producción: Siete discos, cada uno en su propio estuche, excelente sonido, y todo el material subtitulado (includo extras, introducción y trailers), además de que los discos son multizona. Cabe destacar que esto no fue obra de una gran empresa sino de LaserLight Video, pero es algo que los grandes estudios deberían tomar como ejemplo, hartos ya de ver películas con extras sin subtítulos. Si a eso le sumamos el costo del set, nos encontramos con una joya que no podemos desperdiciar. Muy recomendable.

A Hitchcock Film In Name Only That Goes On For Ever.......2000-06-26

I have nothing against silent films. In fact Clara Bow's 'It', Lon Chaney's 'The Phantom of The Opera' and Louise Brooks's 'Pandora's Box' are amongst my all-time favourites. But with the exception of 'The Lodger', Hitchcock never really got going in silent films. 'The Farmer's Wife' certainly had the potential for an easy going, enjoyable comedy, but NOT when it lasts over 2 hours. I challenge anyone to watch this film in one sitting without their eyelids feeling increasingly heavy. On the plus points, Laserlight has dispensed with one of those embarrassing Tony Curtis introductions, and has provided us with a newly recorded (and very good) score. The picture quality is also very good. If you're tempted to buy this DVD because it's a Hitchcock film, I'd say don't. It is only worth a look to anyone with an interest in silent films or a genuine Hitchcock enthusiast.

Alfred Hitchcock: Young and Innocent/The Cheney Vase/Sabotage/The Lodger

Average customer rating:

Alfred Hitchcock: Young and Innocent/The Cheney Vase/Sabotage/The Lodger
Starring: Alfred Hitchcock
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Suspense | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

Mystery | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $7.49 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

All Deals | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( A ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Alfred Hitchcock: Blackmail/Easy Virtue/Rich & Strange/The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Lifeboat (Special Edition)
Number 17/The Ring
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Under Capricorn

ASIN: B00004YKRA
Release Date: 2004-07-23

Description

Includes:
Young & Innocent
The Cheney Vase
Sabotage
The Lodger

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