Gaslight (1944 film)

Gaslight
Gaslight
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	George Cukor
Screenplay by	John Van Druten; Walter Reisch; John L. Balderston;
Based on	Gas Light; 1938 play; by Patrick Hamilton
Produced by	Arthur Hornblow Jr.
Starring	Charles Boyer; Ingrid Bergman; Joseph Cotten; May Whitty; Angela Lansbury;
Cinematography	Joseph Ruttenberg
Edited by	Ralph E. Winters
Music by	Bronisław Kaper
Production; company	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by	Loew's, Inc.
Release date	May 4, 1944;
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2 million
Box office	$4.6 million

Gaslight is a 1944 American psychological thriller film directed by George Cukor, and starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Angela Lansbury in her film debut. Adapted by John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston from Patrick Hamilton's play Gas Light (1938), it follows a young woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is descending into insanity.^[4]^[5]

A remake of the 1940 British film of the same name directed by Thorold Dickinson, Cukor's version had a larger scale and budget than the earlier film, and lends a different feel to the material. To avoid confusion with the first film, Cukor's version was originally titled The Murder in Thornton Square in the UK.^[6] The film features numerous deviations from the original stage play, though the central drama remains that of a husband trying to drive his wife insane in order to distract her from his criminal activities.

Gaslight was released theatrically on May 4, 1944, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to critical acclaim, and received seven nominations for the 17th Academy Awards, including for Best Picture, winning two: Best Actress (for Bergman); Best Production Design. In 2019, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".^[7]^[8]^[9]

Plot

In 1875, after world-famous opera singer Alice Alquist is murdered at her London home, her orphan niece Paula is sent to Italy to follow in her footsteps. As an adult, Paula marries her accompanist Gregory Anton after a two-week whirlwind romance. They agree to settle in London and occupy her late aunt's long-vacant townhouse. Paula grapples with the memory of her aunt's murder, and Gregory suggests storing Alice's furnishings in the attic. When Paula finds a letter to her aunt from a man named Sergis Bauer, Gregory reacts violently but apologizes. He hires a young maid, Nancy, and insists that she never bother his "high-strung" wife. Paula is surprised when Gregory chides her supposed forgetfulness, but on a visit to the Tower of London, she cannot find an heirloom brooch he gave her, although it was stored safely in her handbag. She is plagued by noises coming from the boarded-up attic, and notices the gaslights dimming for no apparent reason when Gregory is not home, which he assures her is only her imagination.

Gregory flirts with Nancy, whose disdain for his wife only worsens Paula's nerves. Her anxious behavior is noticed by Inspector Brian Cameron of Scotland Yard, a childhood admirer of Alice. Struck by Paula's resemblance to her aunt, Cameron attempts to reopen the cold case, discovering that a gift of royal jewels was not recovered after Alice's murder. Isolating his wife from the world, Gregory convinces her that she is a kleptomaniac, responsible for hiding a painting, and is too unwell to be in public. Unable to prevent her from attending a party hosted by her old family friend, Gregory accuses Paula of stealing his watch. When he "finds" it in her handbag, Paula becomes hysterical in front of the guests. Taking Paula home, Gregory angrily claims that her mother died in an asylum, and that the letter she discovered from Sergis Bauer never existed. Doubting her own sanity, Paula breaks down.

Meanwhile, Cameron has recruited a patrolman to watch Gregory, who they learn often visits an abandoned house nearby, and is planning to institutionalize Paula. While Gregory is out, Cameron offers Paula his help, confirming that the attic noises and flickering gaslights are indeed real. He deduces that Gregory has been entering his own attic through a skylight via the neighboring vacant house, to search through Alice's belongings. When he turns on the attic lights, the gas to the downstairs lights is reduced. Cameron pries open Gregory's desk, and Paula finds the letter from Bauer that her husband insisted was a delusion. "Gregory" is actually Sergis Bauer, who murdered Alice but was interrupted by a young Paula before he could find her jewels. His marriage to Paula was a scheme to gain access to her aunt's home, followed by a cunning strategy to have Paula institutionalized and so gain full access to Alice's estate.

At the same time, Sergis discovers the jewels hidden in plain sight, sewn into one of Alice's famous costumes. He returns downstairs to find his desk unlocked. He questions the mentally exhausted Paula, who admits the desk was opened by a man that was visiting her. To protect Paula, the kindly cook Elizabeth denies seeing any man and assures Sergis that this was merely a figment of Paula's imagination, driving Paula to despair. Cameron appears and confronts Sergis, chasing him into the attic and tying him to a chair. Finally convinced of her own sanity, Paula is left alone with Sergis, who urges her to cut him free. Instead, Paula taunts him, musing that the knife in her hand might not be real and also finding the "missing" brooch. As the police drive Sergis away, Cameron expresses interest in seeing Paula again.

Cast

Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton/Sergis Bauer
Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist Anton
- Terry Moore as 14-year-old Paula (uncredited)
Joseph Cotten as Brian Cameron
Dame May Whitty as Miss Bessie Thwaites
Angela Lansbury as Nancy Oliver, in her first film role
Barbara Everest as Elizabeth Tompkins
Emil Rameau as Maestro Guardi
Edmund Breon as General Huddleston, Brian's supervisor
Halliwell Hobbes as Mr. Mufflin, Paula's lawyer
Tom Stevenson as Constable Williams
Heather Thatcher as Lady Mildred Dalroy
Lawrence Grossmith as Lord Freddie Dalroy. It was his last film role before his death.
Jakob Gimpel as pianist

Uncredited

Lassie Lou Ahern as young girl
Arthur Blake as butler^[10]
Leonard Carey as tour guide in Tower of London^[10]
Alec Craig as Turnkey^[10]
Gibson Gowland as servant
Gary Gray as boy in park with nanny
Joy Harington as Miss Laura Pritchard^[10]
Syd Saylor as baggage clerk
Morgan Wallace as Fred Garrett
Helen Flint as Franchette

Production

Encouraged by the success of the play and the British 1940 film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the remake rights, but with a clause insisting that all existing prints of the first film be destroyed,^[11] even to the point of trying to destroy the negative.^[12]^[13] Evidently that order was not honored to the letter, since the 1940 Gaslight remains available for both theatrical exhibition, television screenings, and DVD release.

Denominalization of the play's title

Self-help and popular psychology authors sometimes denominalize the film's title (also known as "verbing") and use it as a verb. Gaslighting, in this context, refers to manipulating a person or a group of people, in a way similar to the way the protagonist in the film was manipulated.^[14]

Reception

Box office

According to MGM records the film earned $2,263,000 in the US and Canada and $2,350,000 in other markets resulting in a profit of $941,000.^[3]

Critical response

Critics generally consider the American remake to also be a classic. Bergman's Oscar-winning performance has long been considered among the greatest of all time, while Boyer's portrayal of Gregory was also Oscar nominated. The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther praised the actors. He wrote, "And with Mr. Boyer doing the driving in his best dead-pan hypnotic style, while the flames flicker strangely in the gas-jets and the mood music bongs with heavy threats, it is no wonder that Miss Bergman goes to pieces in a most distressing way. Both of these popular performers play their roles right to the hilt. Nice little personality vignettes are interestingly contributed, too, by Joseph Cotten as a stubborn detective, Dame May Whitty and Angela Lansbury as a maid."^[15]

Film critic Manny Farber, writing in The New Republic registered this appraisal of Bergman’s performance:

A lot of the credit for the quality of [the picture] is due to Miss Bergman, who is able to strike variations of hysteria, perplexity or love that make actually static episodes seem adequately flexible and meaningful…she is one of the few actresses who are expected—and allowed—to do this in films. Her acting zeal and ability sometimes run her on unnecessarily…but she gives a nice rendition of an unwary and unworldly woman being hurt and bewildered, and her more notorious ability to portray the most adoring and lovely of wives makes the nature of the tragedy and cruelty seem even more extreme.^[16]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 89% based on reviews from 35 critics.^[17]

Noir analysis

In 2006, film critic Emanuel Levy discussed the film noir aspects of the film:

A thriller soaked in paranoia, Gaslight is a period films [sic] noir that, like Hitchcock's The Lodger and Hangover Square, is set in the Edwardian age. It's interesting to speculate about the prominence of a film cycle in the 1940s that can be described as 'Don't Trust Your Husband'. It began with three Hitchcock films: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and continued with Gaslight and Jane Eyre (both in 1944), Dragonwyck (1945), Notorious and The Spiral Staircase (both 1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), and Sorry, Wrong Number and Sleep, My Love (both 1948). All of these films use the noir visual vocabulary and share the same premise and narrative structure: The life of a rich, sheltered woman is threatened by an older, deranged man, often her husband. In all of them, the house, usually a symbol of sheltered security in Hollywood movies, becomes a trap of terror.^[18]

Accolades

Award	Category	Nominee(s)	Result	Ref.
Academy Awards	Best Motion Picture	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer	Nominated	^[19] ^[20]
	Best Actor	Charles Boyer	Nominated
	Best Actress	Ingrid Bergman	Won
	Best Supporting Actress	Angela Lansbury	Nominated
	Best Screenplay	John L. Balderston, Walter Reisch, and John Van Druten	Nominated
	Best Art Direction – Black-and-White	Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons and William Ferrari; Interior Decoration: Paul Huldschinsky and Edwin B. Willis	Won
	Best Cinematography – Black-and-White	Joseph Ruttenberg	Nominated
Cannes Film Festival	Grand Prize of the Festival	George Cukor	Nominated
Golden Globe Awards	Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama	Ingrid Bergman	Won	^[21]
National Board of Review Awards	Best Acting	Ingrid Bergman	Won	^[22]
National Film Preservation Board	National Film Registry		Inducted	^[23]
New York Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Actress	Ingrid Bergman	Nominated
Online Film & Television Association Awards	Film Hall of Fame: Productions		Inducted	^[24]