![]() ![]() Just as Paula reaches breaking point, a detective turns up to convince her otherwise. As Paula grows more and more distressed, he twists that against her, too – “Paula you silly child” “Paula, stop being hysterical” “Please control yourself” – until even she is convinced that she is losing her mind. ![]() He openly flirts with the maid (Angela Lansbury in her film debut), and turns her against his wife. “I hope you’re not starting to imagine things again,” he says with faux concern, using her supposedly troubled mind as an excuse to bar her from seeing any visitors or leaving the house. He starts removing more objects from around the house and accusing her of hiding them. He gives his wife a precious brooch, only to trick her into thinking she’s lost it. Funnily enough, the “gaslight” of the title was not the method of manipulation, but a vital clue to its discovery.īergman plays Paula, a young woman whose new husband Gregory (French-American actor Charles Boyer) begins a campaign of abuse against her. The thriller, which won Bergman an Oscar for Best Actress, was adapted from a 1938 play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton, an English novelist and playwright who also wrote the source material for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. ![]() The term refers to a very particular and insidious kind of abuse – the kind where a person is deliberately manipulated into questioning their own sanity. Now, Merriam Webster has chosen it as its word of the year for 2022. “You’re slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.” Seventy-eight years later, the term “ gaslighting” has been used in a published High Court judgement for the first time ever, after a woman’s abusive partner gradually convinced her she had bipolar disorder. It all makes for a satisfying drama that also provides a pretty good showcase for its stars.You’re not going out of your mind,” a detective tells Ingrid Bergman’s Paula in the climactic moments of the 1944 film Gaslight. In fact, it seems to have been constructed rather carefully, so as to provide subtle hints that can be made use of later on. The story does, of course, have some less plausible elements, but it is written carefully enough that the seams rarely show. A very young Angela Lansbury gives her character some pointed moments, and she becomes a useful part of creating the right atmosphere. Joseph Cotten does not really seem as if he could be a Scotland Yard detective, but in a more general way, he succeeds pretty well as a sympathetic policeman who wants to help personally while striving to get at the facts of the matter. Boyer likewise comes across very believably as her calculating husband, and the two leads make their characters into a strong foundation for the tense story. The character of the fragile, self-doubting Paula is an ideal role for Bergman, who conveys Paula's anxious uncertainty while keeping her sympathetic and even engaging. Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer work very well in the two leads, and they get considerable help from the rest of the cast and the production. This American-made version of the English thriller "Gaslight" is well-crafted and well-acted, with many moments of good suspense and tension. ![]()
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