Gaslight 1944

 

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I've been returning to some b&w movies from the 40's that I haven't seen in a while. Why? Well I love movies from the 40's and I have a nice large collection of dvds and blu rays from this decade that I have been picking through, and maybe I have a nostalgia for if not better times, then a time without Trump. I started with George Cukor's elegant 1944 adaptation of a well trodden theatrical melodrama by Patrick Hamilton that was very popular in its day “Gaslight”.

Gaslight figures large in both the definition of the term, that the play brought to our popular vocabulary and the actual use of gaslight as a way of lighting rooms and public spaces back in 1880 and serves nicely as a plot and art direction device. Ingrid Bergman plays the young niece of an opera singer who when the film opens has been murdered in her town house in London and Ingrid who lived with her aunt as a young girl and who discovered her strangled body is seen leaving London for Italy where she will study singing.

The mystery is set and we next discover Ingrid now a young woman singing her heart out as a suave Charles Boyer accompanies her on the piano and her singing teacher shows his apprehension about her having a career as an opera singer following in the steps of her renowned late aunt.

We can see what is hidden in the Boyer and Bergman relationship and already our suspicions are building. Time is pushed forward and Boyer and Bergman are married and Boyer urges her to return to London to the town house that has haunted her since the murder of her aunt. The writing is on the wall and the gas lighting is starting. The mystery really is no mystery as we can easily see what Boyer is up to but we don't exactly know why but that also comes to gas light sooner than later.

Poor Ingrid is mentally tortured by Boyer who plays tricks with her mind to make her think that she is losing it. There is a closed off upper attic that plays a prominent part in the dangerous antics Boyer is using to drive his wife insane. Onto the scene comes Joseph Cotton unbelievable as an inspector at Scotland Yard, and for me is the weak link in the film with his American accent, and stiff countenance. I have a feeling that Cukor had to take Cotton if he wanted Bergman both of whom were under contract to David O. Selznick.

Also in the cast is the always delightful Dame May Whitty as the ditsy nosy neighbor from across the square, and best of all the great Angela Lansbury in her first screen role as the common cockney house maid who is sassy and rude to Bergman and flirty with Boyer. She was all of 17 at the time of the filming and received a supporting actress Oscar nomination, one of the seven nominations the film received including Bergman's for Actress which she won. The film is rich is detail and a pleasure to look at won an Oscar for its production design. There was an earlier British version that M.G.M. tried to have destroyed but happily they did not prevail and is included on the special 2 disc dvd.