Gaslight

I did not see this 1944 mystery masterpiece until 2009 and as the opening credits rolled, I thought, this has to be a Hitchcock film. It isn’t, but it has that feel to it – actually it is adapted from a Paul Hamilton play.

This psychological thriller is about emotional abuse, mind games, and what happens when you give your power away. Sit down with your daughters or your best friend and watch this one – then talk about it. Watch this one with your sons too – because even though this particular piece is about a woman, it can happen to them too.

This movie is scary, but not in the monster movie sort of way, but make no mistake this movie has a monster in it.

Quotes

Paula Alquist Anton (realizing she can’t find a brooch her husband gave her): Oh Gregory, I can't find it...I missed it when we were in the Tower...I know it was here. I can't understand it. I couldn't have lost it. It must be here...I must have pulled it out with something, I suppose. Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Gregory, please forgive me...But your present to me, your mother's brooch. And I wanted to wear it - always. I-I-I don't remember opening my bag...Suddenly, I'm beginning not to trust my memory at all.”

Nancy Oliver: Gonna work on your tunes again tonight, sir? You're always working, aren't you?
Gregory Anton: Yes. What are you doing with your evening out?
Nancy Oliver: Oh, I'm going to a music hall... (starts to sing 'Up in a balloon')
Gregory Anton: I've never been to an English music hall.
Nancy Oliver: Oh, you don't know what you've missed, sir...
Gregory Anton: And whom are you going to the music hall with?
Nancy Oliver: A gentleman friend, sir.
Gregory Anton: Oh, now you know, Nancy, don't you, that gentlemen friends are sometimes inclined to take liberties with young ladies.
Nancy Oliver: Oh no, sir, not with me. I can take care of myself - when I want to.
Gregory Anton: You know, Nancy, it strikes me that you're not at all the kind of girl that your mistress should have for a housemaid.
Nancy Oliver: [flirtatiously] No, sir? She's not the only one in the house - is she?

Gregory Anton: I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were dangerous to me.
Brian Cameron: I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were dangerous to her.

Plot Summary

The film opens up in London, England at the turn of the century and pans to the Number 9 apartment on Thornton Square. We see that internationally famous opera singer Alice Alquist (whom we never see in person) has been murdered in what appears to be a robbery gone wrong – a robbery interrupted by her niece Paula Alquist (Ingrid Berman), who has been living with her aunt. The robber/murderer gets away. Trying to put the awful night behind her and get on with her life, Paula decides to go to Italy to train (in opera) with her aunt’s former teacher.

Years go by and Paula meets, falls in love, and marries a suave and debonair song writer/composer named Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), who persuades her to go back to England and live in the vacant London townhouse that she had lived in with her aunt. She resists, but he “talks her into” the move and they head to England. Around this time Paula discovers a letter addressed to her aunt by a man named Sergius Bauer, dated only two days before the murder, tucked away in a music book. Gregory's reacts with unexpected anger when she talks to him about, but he quickly composes himself and shares that his anger was for her sake – because she had to relive the experience.

Upon her husband insistence (he says it is for her own good), Aunt Alice's things are packed away in the attic and the door sealed. Odd and unexplainable things start to happen to Paula which make her question herself and even doubt her own sanity. At the Tower of London, she looses a brooch Gregory had given her, which she had stored safely in her handbag, pictures disappear from the walls of the house and are found in odd places, Paula hears footsteps above her in the attic which has been sealed off, and the gaslights dim and brighten for no apparent reasons.

There is a small house staff, but you can see Gregory undermining Paula’s authority with them in settle ways. The head housekeeper/cook, while very kind to Paula, is deaf and goes to bed shortly after supper. Nancy (Angela Lansbury), the young housekeeper, who treats her mistress as if she is the one running the house, is either out for the evening or in her room -- neither of the ladies see or hear the things Paula does. Going between being the compassionate husband to being a stern “father-figure,” Gregory insinuates that Paula is responsible or more appropriately irresponsible. She tries to tell him that she is not, but comes to realize he does not believe her and then little by little starts she starts to believe he might be right.

Gregory does everything in his power to isolate his wife from other people, allowing her neither to go out nor have visitors. Somehow Paula still has a chance encounter with a stranger at the Tower of London, named Inspector Brian Cameron (Joseph Cotton), who has been an admirer of Paula’s Aunt Alice Alquist since his childhood. This is where I stop, but I promise you, you will be satisfied with the end of this movie and the journey it took you to get there.

Life Lessons

“Gaslighting is a form of intimidation or psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory and perception.” I have used this term in the “late night coffee and 'cheese on your hash browns' girl gab sessions” at the local 24 hour diners my friends and I used to go to after we had spent the night dancing -- it came up in conversations with my girlfriends when someone was “trying to pull something over on one of them” or "trying to make them believe something about themselves that simply was not true."

Even if you are not a fan of “old movies” watch this one and then etch its message of manipulation in your memory and make a firm promise to yourself that you will NEVER EVER give your power away to someone else – even someone you love.

In case you’re still not sure what that means, read this:

5 Behaviors of Manipulative People by Brett Blumenthal
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/5-behaviors-of-manipulative-people-549848/

Gaslight Movie Cast List

Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton
Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist Anton
Joseph Cotten as Brian Cameron
Dame May Whitty as Miss Bessie Thwaites
Angela Lansbury as Nancy Oliver
Barbara Everest as Elizabeth Tompkins
Emil Rameau as Maestro Guardi
Edmund Breon as General Huddleston
Halliwell Hobbes as Mr. Mufflin
Tom Stevenson as PC Williams
Heather Thatcher as Lady Mildred Dalroy
Lawrence Grossmith as Lord Freddie Dalroy