"Hitchcock did not gradually 'find himself,' as did Jean Renoir, for instance. Rather, at the outset of his career, he announced his central concerns and declared a position-- at once a philosophical one on the conditions of human existence and a critical one on the powers and limits of the medium and the art of film--to which he remained faithful for over fifty-five years. The Lodger is not an apprentice work but a thesis, definitively establishing Hitchcock's identity as an artist.... When film's 'Golden Age' is celebrated, Hitchcock's silent films are never given their due. Yet, as I understand it, Hitchcock occupies a central role in the history of film, a place already secured by The Lodger and the small but remarkable body of silent films that followed." --William Rothman