Gaslight (1940)

Wonderful character development!

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

In Victorian London, an old woman is murdered at a house in Plimco Square and her house is ransacked, some very valuable rubies being reported missing afterward. The house is not occupied again until years later, by a man and his wife and two woman servants. But the supposedly religious husband is controlling of his wife and suggests she is mentally ill, deliberately moving objects in their home and suggesting she has been moving them in a fit of madness. He also flirts with the younger servant. Rough, a former policeman now working as a groom in the area, is suspicious and gets involved in their lives. What exactly is going on? The gaslight in question refers to suspicious dimming of the house's gas room lights at certain times to suggest goings-on at the house. Though the plot is predictable, the ending makes up for it-not because of its being a surprise but the way it is told, and how the characters handle matters when the truth is revealed.

GASLIGHT, just one of numerous filmed versions of an old play, is a Gothic chiller and film noir combination loaded with atmosphere and mystery. It's one of those old-fashioned movies that has dated in the best possible way, with all the plot ingredients straight out of a Victorian melodrama: missing jewels, a husband trying to drive his wife insane, an unsolved murder, a killer on the loose.The film drips with atmosphere and a sense of Gothic dread, to the degree that it outdoes many all-out horror films of the era. It's also fun to watch, whether it's seeing the dastardly husband at work or watching the kindly detective gradually working out the details of the case. Anton Walbrook's villain chews the scenery in the best possible taste, while Diana Wynyard is effective as the wife who begins to suspect her own sanity.GASLIGHT falls just short of being a classic, but it's a creepily effective film for its genre and well worth watching for fans of this particular type of movie.

From what I've been reading we're fortunate to have this film at all much less showing for rent on Amazon. Not unlike what Paramount did with Frank Capra's Broadway Bill when that studio made Riding High, MGM destroyed this original British made version of Gaslight that came out four years before MGM remade it with Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman and Joseph Cotten, that classic that won Ingrid Bergman her first Oscar. Fortunately MGM was not thorough and we can enjoy Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook in this original film version of the play Angel Street.It might have been nice to have a version of that surviving as well. On stage Vincent Price played the suave husband who is trying to get his wife to question her sanity, he co-starred with Judith Evelyn in the Patrick Hamilton play that ran 1295 performances on Broadway from 1941 to 1944. I can see Price easily doing this part.Of course it would be without the continental suavity of both Charles Boyer and here, Anton Walbrook. Walbrook is one both cold and cool and cruel customer as he tries to drive Wynyard out of her mind. She's at a loss to explain his change toward her. In point of fact she's accidentally discovered a clue to his real identity and he's had history with her family before. She doesn't know what she's discovered which makes her all the more frightened. Wynyard is every bit as good as Bergman in the remake.The major change that MGM made was in the policeman's role. In fact there is some reason to speculate that Scotland Yard man Joseph Cotten may end up with Bergman in the MGM version. Here the dogged detective is British character actor Frank Pettengill who's strictly business. He recognizes Walbrook, but can't prove anything without positive identification.Gaslight remains firmly fixed in the Victorian era it is set. Today what involved an elaborate scheme of deception by Pettengill could be remedied easily with fax and telephotos to Australia where Walbrook presumably was staying for many years.This version of Gaslight is every bit the equal of the finely mounted MGM version and since it is closer to what author Hamilton had in mind, many consider it superior. It's pretty darn good any way you slice it.

I looked in vain for any directorial 'touches' that might justify the esteem is which Thorold Dickinson is held in some quarters. I found little beyond journeyman competence. I was, of course, watching for the first time in 2010 a film released in 1940 when a country at war would presumably be easier to please. I was particularly unhappy at the amount of 'back-story' we had to fill in ourselves. Yes, we did see the original murder (though not, of course, the murderer) and it was clear that Anton Walbrook was the murderer and equally clear that he had returned to the scene of the crime to search for the rubies for which he had resorted to murder in the first place but what was missing, and was to some extent crucial, was the whole story of his meeting his wife, courting and marrying her. The finest actor in the film by a country mile, Robert Newton, had less screen time than the inept Jimmy Hanley and there was no real motivation for Frank Pettingell to become so involved - Joseph Cotton had a far stronger motive in the shape of Ingrid Bergman in the remake. The whole thing is creaky and melodramatic with 'Tilly' Walbrook hamming it up as if auditioning for Charles Laughton's leftovers. Just about watchable.