A Filmmaker's Review: "Gaslight" (1944)

“Gaslight” (1944) is a tremendous achievement of 1940s cinema and a brilliant masterpiece of psychological thriller. It is about a man who constantly drives his wife to madness whilst attempting to get the jewels he wanted when he killed his wife’s aunt. A raging murderer, he needs to convince his wife that she’s crazy possibly in order to make her believe the jewels were never there. But with a man who knew her aunt watching the whole thing very carefully, it may seem impossible.

It’s a brilliant achievement of the screen for a start because of the acting of Ingrid Bergman. Bergman’s acting is always fantastic but in this film it is especially good. She says some lines, speeches etc. that will literally make you shiver. There’s this one near the end of the film in which she calls herself mad whilst her husband has been tied up and caught. Begging her to get the knife to cut him loose, she says that because she is mad she can’t do it - and throws the knife down. She acts out the image that he made for her in order to show him that she couldn’t possibly cut him loose if she keeps losing the knife. It is a great ironic moment of the film that I cannot express how much I love. It is also a moment of the film in which you just have to sit there and admire Ingrid Bergman’s incredible skill, control, mannerisms, voice and acting talent. It will actually make you shiver and I’m not lying.

The second thing you want to see is the cleverness of each scene. Every scene is constructed in a way that makes you believe something is ‘up’. For example: the lamps keep going dim and then, go up again. These, of course, are gaslights. But to ‘gaslight’ someone also means to do something to make them angry, bothered or upset on purpose. This is exactly what he does to his wife. Another meaning for gaslight is ‘gaslight crime’ which is a sub-genre of crime fiction in which thankfully, this movie falls. It is seriously unlike any film you’ve ever seen.

The dialogue is incredible. Everyone is only told exactly the right thing and exactly the right moment and well, it is an amazing achievement of writing because we’ve got a number of things that don’t add up at the beginning but, as we approach the end - things are strangely and slowly found out. It is a brilliant control style that is also used in a number of Hitchcock films. “Gaslight” (1944) has a way of making you feel terrified even though it isn’t actually a horror film at all.

The main aspect of this film is that the ‘monster’ is in fact, a real person. He’s just a regular human being with the want for jewels that belonged to someone else. Strangling the person in question and driving his wife insane seem to be the only ways he can actually get to the jewels without anyone noticing and this is the entire point and plan of the film. It follows his plan almost perfectly and, if that other guy hadn’t gotten involved - it probably would’ve worked. But unfortunately there was a glove missing and, from the point that there was only one glove - I knew something was going to go down involving or having something to do with wherever the other one was.

There are a number of different symbols and themes in this film that tell you it is made in a very sophisticated manner. It is made to showcase these symbols and themes as being directly relevant to the plot. The symbols include: the lamps, the glove, the picture of her aunt. the house her aunt died in, the jewels, the boarded up door and the brooch. All of these things add up to how the main plot plays out and each of them also play a part in how she realises that she isn’t mad after all and that her husband was driving her insane. This is done directly after she finds the lost brooch in the draw and whilst she’s making that speech about being mad. It truly is an amazing film.