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GASLIGHT
Charles Boyer - Gregory Anton
Ingrid Bergman - Paula Alquist
Joseph Cotten - Brian Cameron
Angela Lansbury - Nancy
Barbara Everest - Elizabeth
Dame May Whitty - Miss Thwaites
Directed by George Cukor
I'll warn you now, as an avid reader of Agatha Christie and Gaston Leroux, I knew who the killer of Paula Alquist's famed aunt was within five minutes. And it doesn't matter. Gaslight is not a murder mystery. It is a character play, a drama in the truest sense of film noir, so who the murderer turns out to be is not important.
As the movie opens, we are in Victorian London, a grieving young woman being led from one of the gloomy townhouses that seems to be the only housing available for the upper class of that period. Her aunt, a famed opera singer, was murdered there, so the young woman, Paula Alquist, leaves London to train her own voice in Italy. When she leaves behind London, she leaves behind many painful memories. Compounding her new sense of freedom is her voice teacher's accompanist, Gregory Anton, her lover. Soon, the couple is married. At Gregory's insistence, they move into the same London townhouse where her aunt was murdered a decade before.
The house is still painful for Paula, and Gregory's hiring of the cocky young Nancy (Angela Lansbury, doing very well in her first film role) as a maid only worsens her depression. Soon, she seems to be forgetting things constantly, as Gregory frequently reminds her. After a time, she is a prisoner in her own house, which itself is plagued by strange bumps and noises coming from the boarded-up top floor. In time, Gregory convinces her that she is going insane, like her aunt before her. Paula is helpless to resist until Brian Cameron, a young Scotland Yard detective and longtime admirer of Paula's aunt, begins investigating this terrified young bride.
Gaslight is one of those grand old films in which the scenery is unimportant and usually primitive, the costumes are lush, and all the women are filmed through soft filters, giving them an angelic quality. If there ever was a woman to be filmed thus, it was Ingrid Bergman. She was--and remains--the single most talented actress I've ever seen. Her Paula is not weak, but is frightened of herself. She is afraid of the past. She is afraid of everything but the one thing that causes her the most pain. And, the perfect counterbalance to her victim, Charles Boyer exudes charm at first but then takes on a much darker, more threatening side. The movie draws you in not by hiding who murdered Paula's aunt, but by asking whether or not Paula can find the strength to pull herself out of her predicament.
Unfortunately, as a great deal of films before it have, Gaslight falls victim to the old Hollywood convention of a happy ending. It doesn't call for one, but America was in the midst of a war when it was released. Had it retained a better ending, audiences tired of tragedy would have shunned it. But that can be overlooked, as it does not compromise the storyline's great strengths or change how powerful this drama of control is.
Overall Score: A
