Gaslight (1944)

Director George Cukor has certainly reached a level so tense and frustrating that it was amazing this film wasn’t a bombshell both at the box office and on screen. Set in 1944, the film opens with the niece, Paula, of a world famous opera singer being swept of her feet by her piano accompanying player, played by Gregory Anton who then rushes back to England, now a new wedded couple. Yet the house they move back into is in fact Paula’s (Ingrid Bergman) dead aunt’s who was murdered years earlier and which the murder has never been solved. Paula’s quest to confront her fears soon turn out to be the worst of her nightmares as both her new husband and the house slowly begin to turn on her. What is presented here is a thriller which is full of plot twists after plot twists yet they are all presented in to obvious an environment. Perhaps this is Director George Cukor’s way of empathising Paula’s naivety and total blindness to the cruel, deceitful presence that she has feared all her life. Both Bergman and Anton capture an immense performance of the pretentious upper class whose immoral views of society turn on them all. Yet what lets this film down is its obvious plotline and to mundane script. Nevertheless a true classic which never strays from its roots.