| Gaslight | |
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VHS cover |
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| Directed by | Thorold Dickinson |
| Produced by | John Corfield |
| Written by | A. R. Rawlinson Bridget Boland Patrick Hamilton (play) |
| Starring | Anton Walbrook Diana Wynyard Frank Pettingell |
| Music by | Richard Addinsell Orchestrated, Roy Douglas Direction, Muir Mathieson |
| Cinematography | Bernard Knowles |
| Editing by | Sidney Cole |
| Distributed by | Anglo-American Film Corporation |
| Release date(s) | 25 June 1940 |
| Running time | 84 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Gaslight is a 1940 film directed by Thorold Dickinson, based on Patrick Hamilton's play Gas Light (1938) which stars Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, and Frank Pettingell. This film, which adheres more closely to the original play than the 1944 MGM adaptation, was released in the United States under the title Angel Street to avoid confusion with the 1944 version, which stars Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.
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Alice Barlow is murdered by an unknown man, who then ransacks her house looking for her rubies. The house remains empty for years until a recently married couple, Paul and Bella Mallen, move in. Bella (Diana Wynyard) soon finds herself misplacing small objects, and before long, her spouse (Anton Walbrook) has her believing she is losing her sanity. B. G. Rough (Frank Pettingell), a former detective involved in the original murder investigation, immediately suspects Mallen of really being Bower.
The term gaslighting originated from this film. Paul uses the gas lamps in the closed off upper floors which causes the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly; when Bella comments on the lights' dimming, she is told she is imagining things. Bella is persuaded she is hearing noises, unaware that Paul enters the upper floors from the house next door. The sinister interpretation of the change in light levels is part of a larger pattern of deception to which Bella is subjected. It is revealed Paul is a bigamist. He is the wanted Louis Bower, who returned to the house in order to search for the valuable and famous rubies he was unable to find after the murder.
MGM reportedly tried to suppress release of the 1940 film in the United States, even to the point of trying to destroy the negative, so that it would not compete with their more publicized 1944 film.[1]
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