Gaslight

Bella is seized by the shoulder by her husband

This Gaslight, the 1940 version, shouldn’t really exist. When MGM decided to remake the British original in 1944 as a star vehicle for Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, they tried to destroy the original prints, as if the 1940 film had never existed at all – a case of gaslighting Gaslight? Bergman and Boyer are good in the remake, and they have alliteration on their side. But so do (Anton) Walbrook and (Diana) Wynyard, in Thorold Dickinson’s excellently creepy original. The plot in a thumbnail. He’s gaslighting her into thinking she’s mentally unstable. Why? So she won’t ask too many questions about what’s going on under her roof. To the point where she … Read more