Gaslight (1940)

Gaslight is a British thriller film first released in 1940, directed by Thorold Dickinson.  The film stars Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, Frank Pettingell, Cathleen Cordell and Robert Newton.  It has also been released under the title: A Strange Case of Murder.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Not long after moving into her new home, a grand London mansion, Bella Mallen becomes convinced that she is starting to lose her mind.  In the evening, she imagines she hears noises in the empty rooms above her bedroom and sees the gas lights dim mysteriously.  Her husband, Paul, shows her little sympathy and merely chastises her when he discovers that she has been stealing and hiding objects around the house for no apparent reason.  B.G. Rough, a former policeman, recognises Mallen as the nephew of an old woman who once lived in the house.  Twenty years ago, the old woman was murdered and her home ransacked; the culprit was never brought to justice.   Intrigued, Rough begins his own investigation and soon realises that Bella is in the greatest of danger...

Thorold Dickinson’s inspired adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s popular stage play remains one of cinema’s most chilling portrayals of insanity, thanks mainly to the remarkable performances of its two lead actors.  As the villainous husband to a fragile Diana Wynyard, Anton Walbrook starts out as merely cruel and sinister, but he ends up absolutely terrifying, the perfect embodiment of undiluted evil, and quite mad with it.  In the final gripping showdown, it isn’t obvious who is the pottiest, the venom spitting Walbrook or the knife wielding Wynyard.  It is a tribute to both actors that they play these juicy roles for real, without going over the top and ending up as comedy lunatics.

When he made this film, just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Dickinson was one of Britain’s most promising young film directors, although his early promise soon fizzled out and he only completed around a dozen features.   Although Gaslight was made quickly, it demonstrates Dickinson’s visual flair, with its long tracking shots and film noir-like lighting and camera angles.  The camerawork on this film is particularly impressive; note how the spacious sets become almost unbearably claustrophobic (they actually appear to shrink physically) as Walbrook’s hold over Wynyard tightens, like an enormous claw-like vice.  The cancan sequence is pretty spectacular too, offering a welcome respite before the harrowing denouement is sprung on us.

When MGM bought the rights to Hamilton’s play, the studio head Louis B. Meyer insisted that all existing prints of this film be destroyed to avoid comparison with MGM’s remake.  Fortunately, a few prints survived and we are able to compare the two films.  The 1944 MGM version, which was directed by George Cukor and featured Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, is certainly a glossier production, but it lacks the dramatic intensity, bleakness and sustained aura of menace which the 1940 original has in a abundance.

© Derek Adamson 2010

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