‘Ello loves, welcome to another installment of our humourous little newsletter. This time around we watched Gaslight, a 1944 psychological drama/thriller starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Don’t forget anything important (you’ve been so forgetful lately) and read on!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched?
Ellen: The term “gaslighting” started coming across my desk circa 2015 or so. I did not know what it meant, and for a while I continually got it mixed up with a bar in Houston called Gaslamp, for which I think I can be forgiven because the aforementioned bar also boasted terrible vibes. Once I learned what it meant and where it came from, I put the movie Gaslight on my personal watchlist and waited for a nice man to come along to actually push me to watch it.
Tyler: Hello, it is I: a nice man who has come along and given you a spreadsheet-based push to watch this movie. Speaking of being a man, I was largely and blissfully ignorant of the term and concept of “gaslighting” until it became so widespread (particularly during the peak of the #MeToo movement) that I had to look it up. I think you were actually the one who told me of its cinematic origins, so I’m eager to watch some manipulation! I mean … uh, let’s get into Plots & Feelings!
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): Ten years after her aunt was murdered in their London home, a woman returns from Italy in the 1880s to resume residence with her new husband. His obsessive interest in the home rises from a secret that may require driving his wife insane.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
The lamps are being lit in London’s Thornton Square, and the light is bright enough to see a newspaper proclaiming that the strangler of world-famous opera singer Alice Alquist is still at large. The score is rife with drama-inducing chords and eerie tones of the theremin as a shell-shocked young woman in mourning garb departs in a carriage. This is fourteen-year-old Paula, and she has just found her aunt murdered in their home at No. 9. She is now on her way to Italy to train to be an opera singer herself and hopefully escape the trauma she just witnessed.
Tyler: You could say she’s had quite the gas-fright.
A decade later, Paula’s kindly old opera Maestro informs her that recently she looks happier and is singing worse, prompting her to confirm that yes: she’s in love! Turns out the object of her affection is accompanist Gregory Anton, and they’ve been together for a breathtaking two weeks. She and her striped bustle rush out to meet him, then subsequently rush on a train to Lake Como to take time to think alone to consider his marriage proposal1. On the way, we meet good old “Bloodthirsty” Bessie Thwaites, a gossipy resident of Thornton Square, who offers up some digestive, excuse me, “diggy” biscuits and eagerly tells her carriage-mate of the unsolved muder that took place back home. Paula gets increasingly uncomfortable and practically leaps off the train when it stops, straight into the arms of thwaite, thwaite don’t tell me: Gregory!
Ellen: It’s important to establish how comfortable and capable Paula is traveling internationally by herself, so that later we’re just as confused as she is when she’s chided for trying to do things like “go for a walk” or “put coals on the fire” or “be perceptive to changes in the level of light in the room!”
Having eloped at Lake Como and in an effort to satisfy Gregory’s dream of a house on a London square, Paula returns to the “house of horror” on Thornton Square. Bessie is ecstatic to see people moving into the mysterious No. 9, but on the inside it’s rather less exciting: bagged chandeliers, creaky doors, and dead plants abound. Paula shows her new husband her aunt’s treasures and memorabilia, including Chekhov’s single opera glove. As the tour continues, Paula finds a letter addressed to her aunt from Sergis Bauer and begins to read, but Gregory violently yanks it away, claiming he just can’t bear his bride’s bad memories. They decide to lock away all of Alice’s belongings and furnishings in the attic and board it up, definitely not creating an extra sense of foreboding surrounding them in the process.
Three months later, the couple is going out on the town, baby! Paula has been unwell, or at least Gregory keeps telling her she is, according to slightly deaf chef Elizabeth. He conducts onboarding for a new maid with an unpolished personality and a loud dress, telling her how particular her new mistress is. The indicated mistress is thrilled to be getting out of the house and showing Gregory the Tower of London. Before they leave, he gives her a cameo brooch that belonged to his mother, but puts it in her purse because he says she has a tendency to lose things. She’s confused by that comment, but brushes it off. While they’re out, a man notices Paula and smiles at her, which she returns, much to Gregory’s distaste. While her husband oogles the crown jewels with relish, Paula realizes she can’t find the brooch in her bag. Confessing this to Gregory, she asks him to confirm he put it in, to which he responds, “you don’t even remember that?”
Ellen: If you needed an illustrative example of the word insidious: here you go. The point Paula gets to later seems drastic, but if you take into account just the events of this day and multiply it over months, it starts to make sense.
Tyler: All I want is a modern remake with Lizzie from the most recent season of “Great British Baking Show” playing Nancy. Ta!
Thus begins a series of instances wherein Gregory increasingly isolates Paula from the outside world, aided and abetted by Nancy. A picture is missing from the wall, and it’s presented as evidence that Paula is continually removing things, hiding them, and forgetting about it. She is regularly humiliated in front of Nancy and Elizabeth, and Gregory and Nancy flirt openly, then pretend that it’s outlandish for Paula to take issue with their behavior. He adamantly refuses to let Paula visit with Mrs. Thwaites, then admonishes her for not standing up for herself when she’s later upset. Paula also hears footsteps coming from the sealed attic, and sees the titular gaslights dim and brighten for no apparent reason, though the other residents of the house swear they’ve not turned on another light. Gregory continually suggests that these things exist only in Paula’s mind, and he leaves the house each night (often in a huff of frustration) to go to his “office” to “work.”
Tyler: The "I must get out of this house" vibe is peak pandemic and very ahead of its time.
Ellen: Even by the end of the movie, it’s not clear to me if Nancy was knowingly helping Gregory, or if she just followed his lead because she had a crush and enjoyed power over Paula.
Meanwhile, the man from the Tower of London starts doing some digging with his very own aider and abettor: the ever-curious Bessie Thwaites. This is Inspector Brian Cameron of Scotland Yard, and having been a fan of Alice Alquist since he was a child, he recognized the family resemblance in Paula, and his interest in the ten-year-old murder was reignited. He learns from his superior that they never even determined a motive for the murder, and the jewels (?!) were never found. Brian thinks that secret fabulous jewels sound an awful lot like a motive to him, and assigns Constable Budget Benedict Cumberbatch to Thornton Square to keep an eye on the house and get tea (in both senses of the word) from Nancy.
Tyler: Does Inspector Cameron even attempt a British accent? Is he American and somehow also working at Scotland Yard in their secret Opera Singer Murder Unit? I haz confused. Also, between her overly talkative nature and her proclivity for feeding birds, Mrs. Thwaites is my worst nightmare.
Ellen: Mrs. Thwaites is my future.
Brian is really hoping to talk with Paula at a party thrown by a local rich lady for Plot Reasons™. Gregory sent a letter already saying she wouldn’t attend, but Paula appears dressed to the absolute nines in a cascade of flowers and pearls and declares that she’s going with or without him. Rather than risk her having positive human interactions, Gregory quickly doffs his smoking jacket and dons his public manipulation game face. The couple departs in the cab that Nancy gracefully and delicately2 hailed for them. The evening begins with a concert, and Paula and Gregory have a silent fight about the location of his pocket watch over the tones of a piano sonata. Unfortunately, the fight evolves into a full-blown breakdown for Paula. Upon their return home, she deduces that Gregory has suspected her to be insane since she found the letter, and he yells that there was no letter! He says he looked into her late mother and that she died in an asylum when Paula was a baby, furthering his wife’s distress spiral. Gregory goes for the kill, intimating that he will bring in doctors to have Paula declared insane and locked away too.
Tyler: The frantic piano music playing at the party aligns perfectly with Paula's mindset as she realizes his watch is in her purse.
Back at the Yard, Brian has his era-appropriate version of a corkboard with red string, and he and his constable determine that Gregory has been sneaking into his own attic via the skylight through the back alley. Brian shows up at No. 9, and though Elizabeth is reticent to let him in and Paula equally reticent to talk to him, he convinces both of them by producing Alice’s missing opera glove, which she gave to him as a child because he was such a big fan. While they’re talking, Brian clocks the gaslights dimming and noises overhead, and Paula is so relieved that someone else sees it! They break into Gregory’s desk to find his gun is missing, but the letter from Sergis Bauer is not! The Inspector explains that Gregory is Sergis, and that he killed Alice to try and steal her jewels. He now breaks into their own attic every night to search, and he’s deliberately driving Paula out of her mind for the dual purpose of covering up his extracurricular activities and eventually having her institutionalized so the house will go to him.
Ellen: Brian also says that Sergis has a wife in Prague, so, uh, what’s she been up to for the past ten years??
Upstairs, Gregory has finally found the jewels, which were disguised as costume jewelry! He comes down the stairs on the inside, which is really unfortunate for our dear Inspector hiding in the alley waiting for a crook who will never come. Gregory questions Paula about the desk, and she quickly cracks and says a man opened it. Elizabeth covers for her, saying she didn’t let anybody in. Gregory seems as surprised as anyone that Paula is actually hallucinating now and stops threatening her, when TA, BITCH! it’s Brian at the door with the jewels. A fight3 ensues, resulting in Gregory tied to a chair in the attic. Paula goes up to talk to him alone, and he immediately begins manipulation maneuvers. She turns it right back on him, taunting him with a knife and getting him to admit that neither she nor her mother are insane. As he’s taken away, his defense is that the jewels were a fire in his brain. Brian and Paula embrace on the roof, much to Bessie’s scandalized delight.
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … Nancy’s Maid Services!
Having been summarily fired for being a co-conspirator in a plot to destroy an innocent woman’s sanity, Nancy is back in the employment pool and ready to serve! Her previous job was an atypical representation of the work ethic and trustworthiness of this consummate professional, and all inquiries about such topics should be directed toward her former employer. Her skills include advanced cab hailing, stage makeup, and gaslighting. What’s that last one, you say? Don’t worry about it!
Mention ILTBTA in your telegram inquiring about Nancy and receive her legendary fashion advice absolutely free during her tenure!
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Gaslight’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
Gaslight was adapted from the 1938 play “Gas Light” by British playwright Patrick Hamilton, and a remake of a 1940 British film adaptation also called Gaslight. In this week’s installment of “What Else Was This Movie Called?”, the American remake was titled Murder in Thornton Square in the United Kingdom. To make things slightly more confusing, the British Gaslight was referred to as Angel Street in the United States since the play (“Gas Light”) had been on Broadway under that name.4
MGM, who bought the rights to and produced the remake, insisted upon destroying all existing prints of the first film. Overcompensating much?
Not only was Gaslight Dame Angela Lansbury’s feature film debut, but she also earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her role as Nancy.
Ellen: As a small child in the 90s, what I know Angela Lansbury for best is Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast, and I love the idea of that character and Nancy interacting.
Ingrid Bergman won the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Gaslight, part of a string of three straight nominations and four in six years between 1943-1948. In 1960, she became just the second actress to finish the “Triple Crown of Acting” when she won an Emmy Award for her work in “The Turn of the Screw.”
When she wasn’t nailing her acting roles, Bergman was apparently nailing her co-stars and directors (see the politely-titled “Relationships” sub-section of her Wikipedia page). One particular affair, with her Stromboli director Roberto Rossellini in 1950, drew international attention as a major sex scandal given her Swedish roots and American post-war social conservatism (plus a dash of some good old-fashioned xenophobia). In case you thought the 1950s were a simpler time where people weren’t as vitriolic (a “great” time to go back to “again”, if you will), letters and telegrams sent to Bergman during the affair reveal that people were just as stupid and angry then as they are now.
In discussing the film’s noir aspects, film critic Emanuel Levy included Gaslight in a trend of movies at the time that he dubbed “Don’t Trust Your Husband.”5 He said:
It's interesting to speculate about the prominence of a film cycle in the 1940s that can be described as 'Don't Trust Your Husband'.6 It began with three Hitchcock films: Rebecca (1940)7, Suspicion (1941), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and continued with Gaslight and Jane Eyre (both in 1944), Dragonwyck (1945), Notorious and The Spiral Staircase (both 1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), and Sorry, Wrong Number and Sleep, My Love (both 1948). All of these films use the noir visual vocabulary and share the same premise and narrative structure: The life of a rich, sheltered woman is threatened by an older, deranged man, often her husband. In all of them, the house, usually a symbol of sheltered security in Hollywood movies, becomes a trap of terror.
The term “gaslighting” is derived from this movie (shocker), and you should not do it to people.
Ellen: We at ILTBTA stand by the hot take that trying to convince people they are insane is bad.
Honorable Mentions
What other movies should you be watching?
Our next Honorable Mention goes to another Ingrid Bergman classic (arguably THE Ingrid Bergman classic): Casablanca, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture in 1943. Humphrey Bogart and Paul Henreid also star in this classic romantic drama about an American expat (Bogart) living in the titular city during WWII, where his former flame (Bergman) walks into his gin joint asking for help! From the dialogue to the world-building to the chemistry between the two leads, Casablanca is a truly iconic movie.
Casablanca is free to stream on HBO Max (with a subscription) and is also playing at select theatres on January 23rd and January 26th in celebration of the 80th anniversary of its 1942 release. So if you’re comfortable going to a theatre, go enjoy a classic! If not, find someone with an HBO Max subscription and stay in!
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to cozy up to the Academy on a train to chitchat and feast on diggy biscuits. The tension-building really holds up, and while the performance accolades rightly go to Ingrid Bergman first, Charles Boyer’s ability to turn on a dime from charming to menacing and back again really makes it work. Angela Lansbury must have had so much fun playing a cheeky mean-girl maid and getting rewarded with a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Paula’s reactions as time went on trended over-the-top, but I can’t imagine I’d handle it much better, and I’ve certainly cried over less! I enjoyed Mrs. Thwaites whenever she bustled across my screen, though perhaps I wouldn’t want to live across the square from her…
Tyler: I’d like to spend several months manipulating the Academy into thinking that I didn’t like Gaslight, then see if they ever catch onto the fact that I actually quite enjoyed it. I thought Ingrid Bergman nailed the delicate "Am I crazy? Oh my god I'm crazy! Wait, am I sure?" balance perfectly, which I found very reminiscent of very recent ILTBTA subject Amy Adams in The Woman in the Window” (and, in a different way, Claire Danes’ incredible run as Carrie in “Homeland”). That being said, Paula could be a tad annoying at times (my mom, a loyal ILTBTA reader, accurately described her as “flighty”), but I chalk that up to the ~drama~ of it all. I’m starting to sense a connection between my distaste for melodrama and a theatrical source material (see: most of “West Side Story”). Overall, though, it still kept me guessing about the fates of our main characters until the end, which is the sign of a good thriller for me. Plus, it scores bonus points for cultural impact (icky as they may be).
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!
If you’re a weirdo like Tyler and use Twitter, feel free to follow us there @BlankTheAcademy for ILTBTA updates, rejected jokes, and other random movie-related musings. Once we reach a million followers, we’ll offer to purchase the @ILTBTA handle from the butthead who snagged it before us.
If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
For pizza’s sake, GET YOUR COVID VACCINE AND BOOSTER! Wear a mask. Don’t be an idiot.
Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
In honor of the late great Sidney Poitier, our next Spreadsheet movie will be In the Heat of the Night, the Best Picture winner from 1967. Starring the aforementioned Poitier and Rod Steiger, ITHOTN tells the story of a police detective involved in a murder investigation in a small town in Mississippi. It’s available to stream for free with an HBO Max subscription, and can be rented everywhere else.
Until then, don’t marry someone after just two weeks. It never works out.
Against all odds, we have yet another opportunity to compare an Oscar-nominated movie to “The Bachelor.”
“OY CABBIE, OY!”
Tyler: Excuse you, a “gas-fight”.
“Angel Street” was hella popular on Broadway, and remains one of the longest running non-musicals on Broadway.
Sounds like my ex-wife!
Tyler: Perhaps I should’ve reconsidered our first post-engagement ILTBTA movie …
Ellen: I confused my memories of this movie with Rebecca a couple of times upon the rewatch, and my dad asked if this was a Hitchcock joint up top, so all of this feels right to me. And that’s what matters.