This is further achieved with the ambiguity applied to the film, especially with the other actors that surround Bergman’s character. As a result, the viewer essentially experiences the sense of dread and melancholy that Paula experiences, to which her descent is additionally the audience’s as well. This is a true achievement (and somewhat of a surprising precursor) from director George Cukor, who 20 years later would go on to direct and win his Oscar for My Fair Lady. The true genius with this film is how the suspense and adrenaline within the plot never ceases or offers an opportunity of relief for the viewer. The film follows Paula’s slow descent into madness to which any effort from her to justify she isn’t crazy is not only rebuffed by her husband, but he also is escalating, seemingly encouraging, her to lose her touch with reality. What starts as the simple misplacement of items soon turns into Paula experiencing extreme paranoia, causing her to become a recluse while she endures the consistent assertion from her husband that she is losing her grip on sanity. However, once they arrive Paula begins to suspect something isn’t right, to which her husband repeatedly insists it is her own imagination. He suggests being back there will calm Paula’s nerves about the past and will truly allow for her to move on with her life. Soon after, Gregory convinces Paula for them to return to her aunt’s old townhouse and live there themselves. Years later while she is in Italy learning to become an opera singer herself, she meets Gregory Anton (Charles Boyer), an attractive piano player and immediately they fall in love and are married. The event had traumatized her, shaking the stability of her mental state. The deceased’s niece, Paula Alquist (Ingrid Bergman) was living at the residence at the time of the murder and was the one who discovered the body. The film is based off Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play, Gas Light, which opens with the murder of a famous opera singer. The talent that comes from Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Angela Lansbury, Joseph Cotten, and Dame May Whitty are all astounding given their differing range of talent and interpretation of their roles, which director George Cukor was masterful in utilizing each of them to make their own within the film. Yet what truly sells this film are the actors, who all contribute and complement each other in a plotline that needed a variation of emotions in order for the film to work. In many regards, components of the film such as the Charles Dickens-like fog that encompasses the London streets or the macabre Bram Stoker-like set designs formulate and reinforce an aura that not only stays consistent within the film, but also work together to heighten the environment of claustrophobia and paranoia that is almost unpalatable for the film’s main character to endure. Gaslight is one such film made in 1944 yet having conventions within it that surpass even contemporary film, especially in the genre of suspense. The Film: There is something extraordinary when a film that is over seventy years old still has the capacity to captivate a viewer.
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