Victorian London has been the setting for so many films — from the early years of silent pictures to the present day — that it has arguably become more than just a background and is almost a genre in its own right. The most potent and enduring symbol of the dark side of the nineteenth-century city is Jack the Ripper, who has been the subject of more than a dozen films and many more television dramas. Part of the fascination lies in the fact that he was never apprehended, leading to the feeling — as Peter Ackroyd says — that “the bloodshed was caused by the foul streets themselves and that the East End was the true Ripper”.
The Radiant Abyss examines how the image of the dark side of the city became crystallised through the constant repetition of key symbols and ‘signs’ across a wide range of media — signs which may only have had a loose association with reality but which became invested with ‘truth’ through their very repetition. The mythology that grew up around the figure of Jack the Ripper parallels this imaging of London. The book looks in detail at two key films about Jack the Ripper, made 75 years apart: The Lodger, a silent film made in 1926, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ivor Novello as the suspected murderer; and From Hell, a 2001 film directed by Albert and Allen Hughes and starring Johnny Depp as Detective Fred Abberline.
