Alfred Hitchcock one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife. Stewart eventually manages to convince his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) and his girlfriend (Kelly). As with "Lifeboat" and "Rope", the principal characters are depicted in confined or cramped quarters, in this case Stewart's studio apartment. Hitchcock uses close-ups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment". From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". With his droll delivery, gallows humour and iconic image, the
Alfred Hitchcock lodger pacing up and down in his room above the landlady. Hitchcock had wanted the leading man to be guilty, or for the film at least to end ambiguously, but the star was Ivor Novello, a matinée idol, and the "star system" meant that Novello could not be the villain. Hitchcock told Truffaut: "You have to clearly spell it out in big letters: 'He is innocent.'" (He had the same problem years later with Cary Grant in "Suspicion" (1941).) Released in January 1927, "The Lodger" was a commercial and critical success in the UK. Hitchcock told Truffaut that the film