Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Gaslight/Angel Street (1940) - Walbrook chills in Dickinson's masterpiece

3/14/2021

Gaslight/Angel Street (1940) - Walbrook chills in Dickinson's masterpiece

♥♥♥♥♥♥

Romance and show business are (erroneously) indicated on this poster for Thorold Dickinson's Gaslight

When a young, newlywed woman buys a nice property in London with her tyrannical, manipulative husband, a local amateur sleuth recognizes him as the possible murderer of the house's former owner ...

Gaslight is written by A.R. Rawlinson (Flame of Africa (1954)) and Bridget Boland (He Found a Star (1941)), based on the play Gas Light (1938) by Patrick Hamilton (Rope (1929)), and directed by English master filmmaker Thorold Dickinson (The First Mrs. Fraser (1932)), whose 6th feature it was. The play and adaptations of it gave rise to the verb to 'gaslight' someone, referring to the practice of manipulating (usually) a close relation into doubting their memory and sanity.

This film is in every way a masterly creation; beautifully produced and shot (by Bernard Knowles (Spy for a Day (1940), affectingly scored (by Richard Addinsell (Under Capricorn (1949))) and acted with great accomplishment; both by Diana Wynyard (The Fugitive (1939)) and particularly by Anton Walbrook (Victoria the Great (1937)), who gives one of the all-time best portraits of a homicidal psychopath. - Genuinely frightening and unforgettable.

The fascinating and deeply thrilling, condensed story is tightly controlled plot-wise, and yet supporting characters and the portrait of 1870s London, - with its implicitly racist, imperial, patriarchal, class-delineated 'order', adds a tremendous amount of color. On top of these praises Gaslight's ending has a poetic beauty to it.

Watch a 3-minute excerpt from the film here

Cost: Unknown

Box office: Unknown

= Uncertain

[Gaslight premiered 25 June (London) and runs 89 minutes. Shooting took place in England, including London. Little is recorded of the film's theatrical release during WWII. It was remade in Hollywood as Gaslight (1944) by George Cukor. MGM attempted to have the original film destroyed to further the renown of their own film, which luckily failed. Dickinson returned with Yesterday Is Over Your Shoulder (1940, short), Westward Ho! (1940, short) and theatrically with The Prime Minister (1941). Wynyard returned in A Voice in the Night (1941); Walbrook in Suicide Squadron (1941). 3,959 IMDb users have given Gaslight a 7.4/10 average rating.]

What do you think of Gaslight?

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Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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3/14/2021

Gaslight/Angel Street (1940) - Walbrook chills in Dickinson's masterpiece

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