\u201cGaslight\u201d is a thriller based on a stage play of the same name.\u00a0 And in fact, our term \u201cgaslighting\u201d is based on the psychological abuse that is featured in this story.<\/p>\n
Ingrid Bergman is Paula Alquist.\u00a0 As a girl she lived with her famous aunt Alice Alquist, a diva of the Opera stage.\u00a0 But when her aunt is murdered Paula is sent away from her aunt\u2019s home in London to study music in Italy.\u00a0 As a grown woman she falls in love with a pianist who plays for the maestro that Paula studies under.\u00a0 Charles Boyer plays her lover Gregory Anton.\u00a0 He convinces Paula to marry him and then to move back to London and take up residence in her aunt\u2019s former home.<\/p>\n
But once they settle into the house Gregory begins a concerted campaign to undermine Paula\u2019s sanity.\u00a0 He engineers situations where she seems to lose things or moves things without knowing that she\u2019s done it.\u00a0 And Gregory conspires with the maid Nancy (played by Angela Lansbury) to undermine Paula\u2019s standing in the home by treating her like a feeble-minded invalid.\u00a0 And she is isolated from the outside world under the pretext that she has become erratic and would embarrass herself if others witnessed her mental decline.<\/p>\n
But one person exists who is aware of Paula\u2019s return to London and is interested in her situation.\u00a0 This is a Scotland Yard detective, Brian Cameron played by Joseph Cotten.\u00a0 As a boy he had met Alice Alquist and now he is determined to solve the old murder case.\u00a0 He suspects that Gregory is up to no good.\u00a0 Cameron employs the local constable whose beat includes the Alquist home.\u00a0 He encourages the constable to date Nancy the maid and find out what is going on inside the house.\u00a0 And Cameron directs him to follow Gregory Anton and find out where he goes every night.<\/p>\n
And through Cameron we learn from his superior at Scotland Yard that there were missing jewels that belonged to a foreign king who was a lover of Alice Alquist.\u00a0 He had given them to her but they disappeared after her murder.\u00a0 Now Cameron has the motive he has always lacked for the murder and soon he\u2019ll have more.<\/p>\n
One of the recurring nightmares that Paula experiences is that every night after her husband leaves the house to go to \u201cwork\u201d the gas in her room would go down as if someone had turned on another light in the house.\u00a0 And at the same time, she would here noises from above her room.\u00a0 But the attic was boarded up so no one could enter it and no one else ever notices the gas change but her.<\/p>\n
Eventually Cameron figures out that Gregory enters the vacant house around the block in order to climb on the roof and enter the attic of his own home from the roof.\u00a0 There he searches for the jewels of Alice Alquist.\u00a0 Once Cameron figures this out he barges into the Alquist home while Gregory is in the attic and he confronts Paula with the information.\u00a0 While Cameron is searching Gregory\u2019s locked desk for his gun Paula notices a letter that Gregory had claimed that she had imagined.\u00a0 This note was written by an admirer of Alice Alquist named Sergis Bauer and had been found in Alice\u2019s papers when she died.\u00a0 After examining it and comparing it to an example of Gregory\u2019s handwriting Cameron informs Paula that Gregory and Sergis Bauer are the same man.\u00a0 Now it is clear that Gregory is her aunt\u2019s murderer.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Gregory has finally found the jewels in the attic and Cameron notices the gas light rising meaning Gregory is coming home.\u00a0 Cameron rushes out of the house to catch Gregory on his way home.\u00a0 But Gregory no longer needs to keep up a pretense of working outside his home so he comes through the boarded-up attic door inside the house. \u00a0\u00a0When Gregory discovers his desk has been rifled, he accuses Paula.\u00a0 She declares that a man did it.\u00a0 When Gregory demands to know what man was in the house the cook lies claiming that no one has been in the house in order to stall for time.\u00a0 But hearing this Paula begins to doubt her sanity again.\u00a0 \u00a0She is just about to collapse into despair when Cameron shows up and confronts Gregory.\u00a0 A struggle ensues and after a stray shot Cameron disarms Gregory.\u00a0 Gregory bolts up into the attic and Cameron follows.\u00a0 Meanwhile the cook has summoned the constable from the street and he bounds up the stairs and the two policemen subdue and tie Gregory to a chair in the attic.<\/p>\n
For the finale Cameron agrees to let Paula talk alone to the securely bound Gregory.\u00a0 Gregory begs Paula to take a knife out of a cabinet drawer and cut him free to allow him to escape.\u00a0 But now Paula taunts him with his own words.\u00a0 She says she\u2019s insane so she can\u2019t trust her own senses that something is actually a knife.\u00a0 Then she throws the knife away and says, \u201cBut I seem to have lost it.\u201d\u00a0 Then by chance she finds a piece of jewelry that Gregory claimed she had lost and she becomes agitated and she declares her hatred for him and her joy at seeing him being brought to justice.\u00a0 And she opens the door and demands that Cameron take Gregory away to his fate.<\/p>\n
Right up front in the discussion I have to state that listening to Charles Boyer\u2019s voice in this movie annoys the hell out of me.\u00a0 The combination of his accent and his constant hectoring of Paula makes me want to punch him in the nose.\u00a0 But at the same time Paula\u2019s inability to stand up to Gregory\u2019s bullying is also very annoying.\u00a0 I want to shake her and slap her in the face and tell her to snap out of it.\u00a0 Interestingly, Camera Girl has claimed in the past that I employ gaslighting against her.\u00a0 But I claim it\u2019s just a combination of bad memory and growing insanity on her part.\u00a0 Silly woman.<\/p>\n
Beyond those visceral feeling I enjoy this movie, especially the ending where Joseph Cotten sets things right.\u00a0 Ingrid Bergman is a very good actress and even in this exaggerated atmosphere of emotional turbulence she provides a very convincing performance.<\/p>\n
Highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cGaslight\u201d is a thriller based on a stage play of the same name.\u00a0 And in fact, our term \u201cgaslighting\u201d is based on the psychological abuse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[3440,1238,1237,2745,43,38,1355],"class_list":["post-16893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-charles-boyer","tag-hollywood-golden-era","tag-ingrid-bergman","tag-joseph-cotten","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n