In THE LODGER, this motif has several inflections. (1) The detective Joe is proud of his handcuffs, telling Mr Bunting that they are ‘a brand new pair of bracelets for the Avenger’. When Daisy joins the two of them, he declares cockily that when he has put a rope round the Avenger's neck – he uses the handcuffs to mime the hanging – he’ll put a ring round Daisy's finger. (2) Joe then threatens to handcuff Daisy and, when she resists and flees, pursues her up the back stairs. In the front hall he catches her and carries out his threat. Daisy's scream brings the Lodger to the top of the stairs and he gazes down intently at the little drama being enacted below. Despite Daisy's distress, he does not interfere. (3) When Joe later concludes that the Lodger is the Avenger, he arrests him, putting him in handcuffs. The Lodger escapes, but his inability to use his hands gives him away, and he is pursued by a vengeful mob. As he climbs over some railings, the handcuffs get caught, and he hangs, helpless, whilst the mob attack him. Learning that he is innocent, Joe does his best to stop them, but it is in fact the prompt appearance of The Evening Standard, with its account of the capture of the Avenger, that serves to draw the mob away.

Here the handcuffs are used, first, to symbolise Joe's notion of marriage – as soon as he has proved himself by capturing and executing the Avenger, Daisy will become his prisoner. But the Lodger's fascination with this scene suggests something else: that he is turned on by the idea of Daisy in handcuffs? That he is seeing himself in Daisy's place? If we take it that, as with most of Ivor Novello's films, there is a gay subtext (➢ HOMOSEXUALITY) – as in Joe's earlier comment: ‘I’m glad he's not keen on the girls’ – we could even read this moment as suggesting that the Lodger might rather like the idea of being handcuffed by Joe.