Hitchcock called his third feature “the first true Hitchcock movie.” His first foray into the thriller genre, The Lodger introduced the “wrong man” theme (not to mention the obsession with “golden curls”) that would recur throughout his career. Ivor Novello plays the mysterious tenant who may be implicated in a series of Jack the Ripper–style murders; his performance dares the audience to suspect an attractive man of unspeakable crimes. The film's style is marked by both the long shadow of German Expressionism and Hitchcock's own visual ingenuity, as in the famous sequence of the lodger pacing in an upstairs room, shot through a floor of glass.
—Juliet Clark