Gaslight (1944)

Tagline: Strange drama of a captive sweetheart!

Gaslight movie storyline. This is a superb, definitive psychological suspense thriller from ‘woman’s director’ George Cukor. [Previous Cukor films that were similar as period dramas included Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), and Camille (1936).] This lavish and glossy MGM film, with authentic Victorian-era production design, was a remake of a taut and subtle film made five years earlier in Great Britain.

This earlier version, starring a very sinister Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, was directed by Thorold Dickinson and released in the US as both Gaslight and Angel Street (1940). Both versions were adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s long-running, London staged play-melodrama, originally titled Angel Street.

The film’s plot, faithfully adapted by its screenwriters, is about a diabolical, Victorian criminal husband Gregory Anton (Boyer playing against type) who systematically and methodically attempts to torment and drive mad his bedeviled, shy young wife Paula Alquist (Bergman), while in pursuit of hidden jewels. Bergman was very effective in the role of the vulnerable woman, who becomes helpless as she experiences a debilitating nervous breakdown and near insanity, until saved by her romantic admirer – a suspicious Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron (Cotten). The film’s impressive photography is expressionistic, shadowy, and menacing – as befits the film’s ominous plot.

Gaslight is an American 1944 mystery-thriller film, adapted from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay; it also won the Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Production Design.

Directed by: George Cukor
Starring: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, May Whitty, Angela Lansbury, Barbara Everest, Emil Rameau, Edmund Breon, Heather Thatcher, Lawrence Grossmith, Jakob Gimpel, Edmund Breon
Screenplay by: John Van Druten, Walter Reisch
Cinematography by: Joseph Ruttenberg
Film Editing by: Ralph E. Winters
Costume Design by: Irene
Set Decoration by: Edwin B. Willis
Art Direction by: Cedric Gibbons
Music by: Bronislau Kaper
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: May 4, 1944