Denise Noeby Denise Noe
First published in October/November, 2005, Volume 2, Issue 5, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
The setting of the Victorian era is crucial to Gaslight, first released in 1940 and then remade four years later. The title refers to the manner in which people lit their homes and other facilities but the word has become a verb, “to gaslight,” specifically because of these movies.
The story told in both versions is that of a husband trying to drive his wife insane (“to gaslight” her) by leading her to believe she is already going insane. He plays numerous tricks on her, making her believe that she is arbitrarily misplacing items and that she is imagining an inexplicable dimming of a gaslight and the sounds of footsteps. The idea of unhinging someone’s mind by leading that person to mistrust the evidence of his or her own senses seems all-too-believable as well as diabolically clever.
Interestingly, both husband and wife superficially represent the marital ideal of the Victorian period (except for those of the period who were women’s suffrage advocates). Indeed, they at first appear to exemplify male and female roles as advocated by contemporary traditionalists like Promise Keepers, Helen Andelin of Fascinating Womanhood, Marabel Morgan of The Total Woman, and Laura Doyle of The Surrendered Wife. The husband gives orders and the wife is dependent, submissive and trustful. This model for a marriage can and does work beautifully in individual cases, but someone with malignant intent can cruelly manipulate it as the husband does in Gaslight.
Both black and white films are top-of-the-line psychological thrillers. British made and directed by Thorold Dickinson, the 1940 Gaslight stars Anton Walbrook as the villainous husband Paul Mallen and Diana Wynyard as his put-upon wife Bella Mallen. Cathleen Cordell plays the saucy parlor maid Nancy and Minnie Rayner is the cook Elizabeth. Frank Pettingell plays the retired police detective whose suspicions are aroused and who has the probably symbolic name of B.G. Rough although he is gentle with poor Mrs. Mallen but suitably nasty with the husband who has deceived and tormented her.
Dickinson’s direction is tight and the movie flows along at a fast clip. The movie shows its age as characters repeatedly use the word “queer” in the sense of “odd” with no sexual connotation. Anton Walbrook plays Paul Mallen as a stiff, strongly dominant Victorian head of household. Lovely and large-eyed Diana Wynyard is sympathetically fragile. Cathleen Cordell’s Nancy is played with an undercurrent of sensuality and a streetwise cynicism. Rough is smooth (excuse the pun) in his role as the clever former cop and sometimes offers a bit of comic relief with his tendency toward self-aggrandizement.
So convincing is Walbrook in his villainy that one reviewer, John J. Puccio, writing in DVD Review, says, “you have to wonder what the new wife saw in him that attracted her.” Actually, that is not such a mystery. Bella is psychologically dependent and has a weak personality. Such a person, male or female, is likely to want, and perhaps even need, a (morally good) psychologically strong mate. The film also allows us flashes of the pretended tenderness that we can presume worked to endear him to her during their courtship. When Bella gets dressed up for an evening out, Paul smiles broadly and beams, “What a very lovely person!”
The marital roles of the time period are underlined in this film. A husband is, at least officially, the head of the household and final authority. In an early crowd scene we see an interaction between a man and woman that makes it clear that the man is the boss. The woman makes a suggestion and the man says, “It wouldn’t be correct.” She begins an objection and he firmly tells her, “My dear, I said ‘no.’” Paul speaks of himself as the “guardian of my wife’s health.” He accuses her of having violated his “express orders.”
Sex roles are also emphasized when Rough (perhaps showing his “rough” side) asks Bella to accompany him to a toy shop because he “must have a woman about when brats are concerned.”
We also see demonstrations of the formal religiosity of the period along with the husband’s role as leader when Paul reads from a Psalm to begin a meal and later asks servants to kiss the Bible in token of their truthfulness.
Contemporary people familiar with the psychology of abusive relationships would immediately recognize Paul’s actions as those of someone dangerously controlling. He tries to keep Bella away from friends and relations and even deprive her of such simple pleasures as the cuddling of her dog.
The story is often told that MGM, the producers of the 1944 Gaslight, attempted to have the 1940 version bought up and the negatives destroyed. What actually happened was that MGM bought the remake rights, then had the original film withdrawn from circulation in the United States.
The oft-told tale of film and negative destruction seems reminiscent of the accounts of an acquitted Lizzie Borden buying up and then burning all the copies of reporter Edwin H. Porter’s 1893 The Fall River Tragedy. However, since many copies of the book are still in existence the story may be as apocryphal as that of MGM’s attempted destruction of the 1940 Gaslight.
The 1944 MGM Gaslight was directed by George Cukor and boasts an extraordinarily talented cast. The name of the characters have been altered as Charles Boyer plays a husband here called Gregory Anton (perhaps inspired by Anton Walbrook?) and Ingrid Bergman plays his wife, Paula Alquist Anton. The part of the saucy maid is played by Angela Lansbury, who made her screen debut as this Gaslight’s Nancy (name unchanged). Barbara Everest is the cook Elizabeth Tompkins. Joseph Cotten portrays Brian Cameron, the detective who unravels the case. An interesting character has been added to this Gaslight. She is Miss Thwaites (Dame May Whitty), a talkative and nosy neighbor with a penchant for reading and discussing murder mysteries.
This Gaslight proceeds at a more leisurely pace than the 1940 version and has more elaborate sets. According to the Internet Movie Database, “the sets are deliberately overfilled with bric-a-brac to emphasize Paula’s increasing sense of claustrophobia.” The more restrained, even stately, movement of the story adds to its sense of intrigue. Scenes like those of a guided tour of the infamous Tower of London, walks through fog shrouded London streets, and an isolated Paula with her husband’s faux “warnings” pounding through her mind, give this first-rate thriller some of the sense of a horror film. While marital roles are not as explicitly delineated as they are in the first Gaslight, Gregory’s dominance is evident, especially when he warns a servant, and later Paula, to “be careful” in answering his questions as well as ordering Paula to go to her room. A Bible-kissing scene underscores the era’s sense of formal religiosity.
Performances in the 1944 Gaslight are superb. Both Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman were already stars when they made this movie. Boyer demanded top billing and Bergman acceded to it because she wanted to work with this actor whom she very much respected. Boyer’s Gregory Anton is not as sinister as Anton Walbrook’s Paul Mellon but has that special debonair charm for which Boyer was rightly famed, here seen with an oily, often downright creepy, spin. Ingrid Bergman is utterly believable in showing Paula’s deterioration from happy, trusting, winsome newlywed to insecure, self-doubting and nerve-wracked victim. Dame Whitty gives Miss Thwaites just the right combination of insight and chattering insensitivity to enable her character to add both comic relief in some places in which she appears and to heighten tension in others. Angela Lansbury gives Nancy a lively curiosity, alert intelligence, and restrained but enticing sexiness. Joseph Cotton is first-rate as the concerned and astute detective. The role of Elizabeth the cook has been slightly beefed up and Barbara Everest rightly plays her as a decent, ordinary person rising to an extraordinary occasion.
The 1944 Gaslight was well represented at the Academy Awards for that year. Ingrid Bergman won a Best Actress Academy Award (the first of her three Oscars) for playing Paula. Charles Boyer was nominated for Best Actor. Angela Lansbury was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her first screen role ever. The movie itself was nominated for an Academy Award, as was its screenplay. It won for Best Art Direction (Black-and-White).
A DVD has recently been released which includes both Gaslight productions. Viewers of this DVD are in for a special treat since seeing one movie can enhance one’s appreciation for the other as each is excellent in its own special way. Well crafted and well acted, both films are richly rewarding entertainment experiences.
Gaslight may also be read as a warning of what can go wrong in tradition-bound marital relationships of the sort that were the norm in the Victorian period and which have many strong advocates in the present day. The husband-as-leader, wife-as-follower model of marriage requires good will as well as strength of character on the part of the husband. There may also need to be a certain amount of vigilance on the part of submissive wives, who need to check their childlikeness and exercise mature judgment in placing their trust. Both Gaslights dramatically demonstrate how the Victorian ideal of marriage held the potential for the slyest and most malevolent type of abuse.
