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The 1944 version was directed by George Cukor and starred Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, and 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in an Oscar-nominated screen debut (Supporting Actress). The man she has married is actually a bigamist, an adulterer, a murderer with an assumed identity, and a master manipulator who would have successfully had Bella committed were it not for the intervention of a former detective (Frank Pettingelli). The gas lights become representative of the larger pattern of deception which Bella is subjected to.Īnton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard in Gaslight (1940) When Bella notices and brings this up with Paul, he convinces her she is just imagining things. When he does this, it causes the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly. The title is a reference to the gas lamps that Paul lights to help him search the closed-off upper floors. Before long, her husband Paul (Anton Walbrook) has her believing she is losing her mind. Bella (Diana Wynyard) soon finds herself misplacing small objects. The house remains empty for many years, until newlyweds Paul and Bella Mallen move in. Set in London, Alice Barlow (Marie Wright) is murdered by an unknown man, who then ransacks her house, looking for her valuable rubies. This version adheres much more closely to the play it was based on than the 1944 remake. However, it becomes increasingly apparent that he is the one driving her to a breakdown.ġ940’s Gaslight (released in the United States as Angel Street) is a psychological thriller which stars Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard. Now the house is haunted by the memory of that crime.Every evening the gas lights dim, but is it really her sanity slowly slipping away? Her seemingly attentive husband claims she is showing signs of mental illness. But her attacker failed to find the gems and went away empty-handed. A murder took place in the house years ago, with a woman being killed for her jewels. In both films, a wife is trapped alone in a Gothic house in Victorian London, kept far from friends or family. MGM tried to destroy all prints, and the original Gaslight only survived because Dickinson had the foresight to make a personal copy. Strangely, the studio attempted to gaslight audiences by trying to pretend that the British film never existed. Four years later, MGM’s big-budget remake followed. The film was first adapted for cinema by leading British director Thorold Dickinson. The highly successful play was adapted into two feature films, one in 1940 and one in 1944, both titled Gaslight. The term originated from the British play Gas Light (1938), performed as Angel Street in the United States (originally starring Vincent Price). This can include denials from the perpetrator that the abuse ever occurred at all, as well as belittling the victim’s emotions and feelings regarding this maltreatment. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to shake the foundation of the victim’s beliefs.

This often results in that person experiencing a significant loss of self-esteem and perceived self-worth, making them easier to control - and causing them to feel responsible for, or deserving of, abuse and mistreatment. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person secretly sows seeds of doubt in another person, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment. One of the reasons is the cunning and cruel way abusers have learned to manipulate their victims into thinking they have no other options or, worse yet, that they play an important role in their own abuse. Individuals who have never suffered at the hands of an abuser often wonder how it’s possible for someone to find themselves in a situation where they are perpetually physically or emotionally victimized by another person. October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so we explore the films responsible for bringing the term “gaslighting” into popular discourse.