Gaslight
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Movie Reviews of Gaslight
Movie Review: Ultimate Psychological Thriller Rests In Its Subtlety
Summary: 5 Stars
George Cukor takes "Gaslight" from the stage to the screen. This film is done so well, that one would immediately guess that Alfred Hitchcock directed it.
What makes this film work so well (and something that very few of today's directors understand) is the subtlety in which Charles Boyer (Anton) makes his wife feel that she is losing her mind. Unfortunately, many of today's films rest in the violence and gore. I have found that films are more suspenseful when they don't show you everything. Hitchcock was a master of this, and Cukor shows the same restraint here. Don't believe me? Check out "Psycho" again and see how much is not shown on the screen, but allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks with his/her own imagination. This is a far more effective style of film-making.
The film immediately starts off with aftermath of a murder in London, in which Paula (Ingrid Bergman) is being sent away after the tragic events that end with the death of her aunt. The film then jumps some ten years into the future with Paula living in Italy where she meets her future husband, Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer). Things appear to be well between them. But is Anton's true agenda and how is it linked with events of the past? I won't divulge any details about that here for those who have not seen the film.
Ingrid Bergman (perhaps one of the greatest actresses in film history) took home her first Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in this film. It's not hard to understand why. She takes Paula from a sweet and happy young woman to someone who doesn't trust her own mental faculties anymore. This sounds like an easy job for an actress, but it isn't. She has to make the viewer begin to question things as well, and she does. The ending allows her the tremendous payoff that we've been waiting for ever since the film began, and we revel in her ultimate triumph along with her character.
Charles Boyer is fantastic as the sinister Anton. He also creates a complex character who, at first, appears sympathetic toward his young wife to someone who is quickly losing patience with her. But, is there something else at work? Charles Boyer can give a hard gaze that would make anybody begin quaking in their shoes.
Finally, one of my favorite character actors (Joseph Cotton) plays a young assistant at Scotland Yard who was a great admirer of Paula's aunt (who was a great singer in her day). He feels that something is not entirely right with Paula and her husband. Paula is all but shunned away from the public. Anton feels that he can't allow her illness to be given public light. The young assistant decides to find out for himself, and perhaps help Paula in the process.
I've been a huge Ingrid Bergman fan for years, and this was one of the first films of hers that I came across. I loved it immediately, and quickly decided that this was the best psychological thriller that I'd ever seen. It works on so many levels that still work today.
Keep an eye out for a very young Angela Lansbury as a saucy maid. She looks so young!
If you're looking for great suspenseful fun weaves a tapestry through the long lost art of subtley without the violence and gore, then you are in for a true treat! Gaslight more than fits the bill!
Movie Review: "That house comes into my dreams sometimes - a house of horror"
Summary: 5 Stars
GASLIGHT is a first-rate psychological suspense thriller which features the passionate Academy Award-winning performance of Ingrid Bergman in the role of Paula Alquist Anton, a young, fragile wife who is slowly being manipulated into a state of near-insanity by her sinister new husband Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer).
Having been traumatized by the murder of her aunt, the opera singer Alice Alquist, 10 years previously in London, Paula Alquist has been living and studying music in Italy in the years since that tragedy. It is there that she meets and impulsively marries the pianist Gregory Anton. Guided by Anton's wishes, the young couple moves back to London and back into the townhouse where the murder occurred. For the first time in 10 years, Paula declares to Anton, she is no longer afraid: "you've cast out fear for me...I've found peace in loving you. I could even face that house with you...Yes, yes, you shall have your dream. You shall have your house in the square." Yet, the townhouse still haunts her somewhat and, when her husband begins hinting about her forgetfulness ("You know, you are inclined to lose things, Paula") and seems to purposefully arrange situations which give him the opportunity to admonish her and treat her as an irresponsible child, she slowly begins to believe that she is losing her mind.
Joseph Cotten plays Brian Cameron, the Scotland Yard detective who has begun looking into the cold murder case of Alice Alquist after encountering Paula and Anton on one of their rare outings and having been struck by the resemblance between Paula and her famously beautiful aunt. His presence seems to accelerate Anton's malevolent campaign against his wife; he conspires to keep her home-bound and away from all social connections. Soon, he begins leaving Paula alone in the house every night, and she is tormented by the eerily dimming gaslights and the strange noises and footsteps she imagines around the house. A very young Angela Lansbury (in her first film role) plays the tarty, insolent maid Nancy, who is devoted to Anton and is openly contemptuous toward the increasingly fragmented Paula.
Through the expressionistic black and white cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg, the Academy Award-winning art direction of Cedric Gibbons, and under the taut direction of George Cukor, GASLIGHT evokes a heavy mood of Victorian-era suspense set in the hoary mansions and foggy streets of London. As Cameron meets Paula and the mystery unravels itself in a thrilling finale, one feels as if one were watching Alfred Hitchcock in one of his finest moments. Cukor did a truly fantastic job in a genre that was largely unfamiliar to him and GASLIGHT remains one of the finest gothic suspense thrillers ever made.
Jeremy W. Forstadt
Movie Review: Cukor Doing a Hitchcock
Summary: 5 Stars
Cukor's GASLIGHT has been thought of as an anomaly in his career, the one fi;lm of his which might honestly been mistaken for a Hitchcock thriller.
Perhaps some of this confusion is set off by the presence of Bergman, one of Hitchcock's favorite actresses ("It's only a movie, Ingrid") together with Joseph Cotten, with whom Hitchcock teamed Bergman in the later UNDER CAPRICORN. The "one word title" of GASLIGHT is also reminiscent of how many one word titles Hitchcock employed over the years. Cotten and Bergman (as well as Hitchcock) were contracted to the former MGM head of production David O Selznick, who was making SINCE YOU WENT AWAY (also with Joseph Cotten) at the same time that Cukor was shooting GASLIGHT, so that Cotten was available to him only in the evenings.
For an MGM release in 1944 GASLIGHT is oddly bereft of MGM stars! Angela Lansbury made her debut here, but where are the other MGM notables? We know that during the war many of MGM's leading men were tied up in the service, but were there many MGM releases in 1944 in which none of the three leading players were under studio contract? I don't think so! This is definitely an odd duck among MGM's wartime films.
We have also long known that this was a remake of an older British film made by the esteemed director Thorold Dickinson, and some have cattily assumed that Cukor stole all of Dickinson's directorial flourishes in a paint by numbers Gus Van Sant does Psycho kind of carbon copy of the original. This DVD shows us both films side by side, and at last we can all judge for ourselves. I like Diana Wynyard, who's very good in the Dickinson GASLIGHT-she has a very different style than Bergman, but both are quite effective. Isn't the time ripe for a full scale Wynyard revival? Let's see her make a comeback via DVD!
Paula, the name of Ingrid Bergman's character, is a favorite name of Cukor's. Viewers will recall that the young society girl caught up in a destructive affair with drunken rouse John Barrymore in DINNER AT EIGHT was also called "Paula." And later on in life, perhaps, this fondness would explain why Cukor allowed Paula Strasberg onto the set of the film SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE, to coach the insecure Marilyn Monroe, with Cukor's compliance.
Movie Review: A crafty, well-made thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
Young Paula Alquist witnesses the murder of her Aunt Alice, a world-reknowned opera singer, in her own house. On the advice of family and friends, Paula moves out of the country, to live with a family friend. After many years, she falls in love with Gregory Anton, and he convinces her to move back into her Aunt's house. Nothign has changed since she left 10 years ago, but Gregoy persuades her to remove her Aunt's belongings in order to keep those painful memories at bay. Soon after moving in, though, strange things start to happen. The gaslights mysteriously dim each night, followed by strange noises coming from the closed off upper floor. Paula begins to lose and to misplace things, convinced by Gregory that she must rest or the strain would get to her. On one of their few outings, for she is somewhat unstable around the outside world, a strange recognizes her and soon discovers that things are not as they seem and that her husband maybe up to something involving her Aunt's hidden jewels which have never been found.Director George Cukor presents a remarkably thrilling film, with superb acting from Ingrid Bergman (in an Oscar-winning performance) as Paula Alquist, Chalres Boyer as her mysterious husband Gregory Anton, Joseph Cotten as Inspector Brian Cameron, and Angela Lansbury in her first screen role as the maid Nancy Oliver. The captivating story of a woman struggling to maintain her sanity is marvelously portrayed on-screen. Bergman fills her character with enough frayed nerves and self-doubt that you feel right along with her. Boyer is both menacing and debonair and gives off just the right amount of malice to make you bite your nails as you watch the film.
This is a first-rate thriller that will keep you glued to the screen!
Movie Review: Excellent double-pack
Summary: 5 Stars
There are two movies and three strong reasons to love this dvd. The disk contains two versions of GASLIGHT, based on Patrick Hamilton's stage play. The first, from 1940, is director Thorold Dickinson's English version starring Diana Wynyard as the retiring young wife and Anton Walbrook as the husband who is trying to drive her insane. The second is the famous one, directed in Hollywood by George Cukor in 1944, starring Ingrid Bergman (she won an Oscar for this one) and Charles Boyer.
I watched the 1940's version first and, somewhat to my surprise, enjoyed it very much. Walbrook's character in the first movie is the epitome of effete villainy, a hiss-able cad whose cruelty made me squirm. Boyer's husband, on the other hand, is a charming rogue with a cold, calculating, concealed and congealed heart. They both get the job done, but Boyer does so in a more believable manner. In the first movie Diana Wynyard's character is extremely shy and retiring, almost to the point where you wonder how she ever managed to make it to adulthood. Ingrid Bergman is given a character more assertive, even though still under her husband's control.
If you can't tell by now, the third reason I love this dvd is the chance it gives to see the evolution of a screenplay by comparing the two movies. That we're given the opportunity to make the comparison is ironic - reports have it that the studio tried to destroy all copies of the '40 GASLIGHT when they released Cukor's version. They shouldn't have worried. Although the `40 version is good, Cukor's is a classic. Wynyard is good is her showcase role while Bergman is transcendent.