Gaslight **** (1940, Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard) – Classic Movie Review 1230

Director Thorold Dickinson’s 1940 British psychological thriller film stars Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, and Frank Pettingell. It is based on Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas Light, following it more faithfully than the 1944 MGM remake Gaslight. After MGM tried to suppress it for so many years, it was finally released in the US as Angel Street, its Broadway production title, in 1952.

Thorold Dickinson’s original 1940 British version of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 classic stage thriller Gas Light packs a powerful punch thanks to the effective performances of its alluring stars Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, as well as Frank Pettingel’s turn as the dogged detective B G Rough.

The film’s other main character is the brilliantly claustrophobic, eerie and suspenseful atmosphere that Dickinson is able to conjure up and this is Oscar-worthy. Dickinson was a cinema poet of mood and atmosphere, and it really shows here.

In the famous story, set in Victorian England, a woman is murdered, and it is believed the unknown killer escaped with the famous Barlow rubies. Fifteen years later, the murdered woman’s nephew, crazed martinet Paul Mallen (Walbrook) moves into the aunt’s home and tries to send his gentle but disturbed new wife Bella (Wynyard) round the bend when she starts discovering the skeletons in his closet as he searches for the rubies. First Bella finds herself misplacing small objects, but soon Paul has her believing that she is losing her sanity.

Engaging and even mesmerising though the film is, some of the meat is missing from the original play and the British wartime production looks slightly on the tatty side. However, it still stays faithful to the stage show and sticks satisfyingly closer to it than the 1944 remake by MGM studios, which suppressed this version for many years. Walbrook is the perfect embodiment of a dangerously creepy charmer and Wynyard is tormented gloriously – she is quite the equal of Ingrid Bergman in the remake.

When MGM bought the remake rights, they demanded a clause that all existing prints of the first film would be destroyed and the studio even tried to destroy all the negatives. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, the British Gaslight survived, and it was finally released in the United States on 10 November 1952. The play had been staged on Broadway as Angel Street, so when the film was released in the US it was called that to differentiate it from the remake.

It is very much in the vein of Hitchcock’s The Lodger, released way back in 1927, with a second remake as The Lodger in this same year as the 1944 Gaslight. Hamilton also wrote the play Rope (1929), the basis of Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope. Bergman and Cotten re-teamed for Hitchcock’s similarly themed Under Capricorn in 1949.

The cast are Anton Walbrook as Paul Mallen/ Louis Bauer, Diana Wynyard as Bella Mallen, Frank Pettingell as B G Rough, Cathleen Cordell as parlour maid Nancy, Robert Newton as Vincent Ullswater, Jimmy Hanley as Cobb, Minnie Rayner as cook Elizabeth, Marie Wright as Alice Barlow, Aubrey Dexter as House Agent, Mary Hinton as Lady Winterbourne, Angus Morrison as Pianist, Jack Barty as Chairman of Music Hall, Katie Johnson as Alice Barlow’s maid, and The Darmora Ballet.

It is made by British National Films and was released by Anglo-American Film Corp.on 25 June 1940 in the UK.

The film has been restored by the BFI and released on Blu-ray in a pristine print in the UK. Since 2017 it is viewable on YouTube.

Gaslighting now refers to manipulating a person or people like the protagonist in Gaslight is manipulated.

English playwright and novelist Patrick Hamilton’s two most successful plays Rope and Gas Light made Hamilton wealthy, though Hangover Square (1941) is often judged his most accomplished work. It too was filmed, as Hangover Square, in 1945. But success and wealth did not bring happiness. Hamilton (17 March 1904 – 23 September 1962) began to consume alcohol excessively while still a young man. After suffering a declining career and melancholia, he died in 1962 of cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, aged 68.

http://derekwinnert.com/gaslight-1944-ingrid-bergman-charles-boyer-joseph-cotten-angela-lansbury-classic-film-review-1231/

http://derekwinnert.com/rope-classic-film-review-428/

http://derekwinnert.com/the-lodger-a-story-of-the-london-fog-classic-film-review-274/

http://derekwinnert.com/under-capricorn-classic-film-review-452/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1230

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/

Frank Pettingel also stars as the dogged detective B G Rough.