Better Than the 1940 Version
Based on Patrick Hamilton's play ANGEL STREET, GASLIGHT was made in Great Britain four years previous to this version. Louis B Mayer was so taken with the play that he bought not only the film rights but also the distribution rights to the 1940 film, after which he locked it in the MGM vault so that it was not seen in the States for decades. It is interesting to compare the two versions: most critics seem to place the British original in higher esteem, but I disagree, mainly due to the performances of the two lead actors. Diana Wynyard, an old-style actress in the British tradition, gives a good but rather uninteresting performance; she spends most of the film in a state of near-catatonia which, frankly, gets old fast, while her co-star Anton Walbrook overacts shamelessly all over the place, which has the unfortunate effect of robbing the piece of much of its suspense.
George Cukor, known as one of the best directors of actors of his day, makes a vast improvement in the acting in the 1944 version, though he may have gone slightly overboard in the case of Ingrid Bergman. She won her first Oscar for her performance in this film, but it is not her best work: an uneven performance that in spots is a tad bit hammy, something that Bergman practically NEVER did; she was a master at underplaying (see CASABLANCA and NOTORIOUS). She's good in GASLIGHT, but as I have already stated in my review of that film, the actress who should have won the Award for 1944 was Barbara Stanwyck for her seminal performance as the ultimate femme fatale in Billy Wilder's DOUBLE INDEMNITY.
Ironically, it isn't really Bergman who gives the best lead performance here: it's Boyer. Aside from a certain "sourpuss" expression on his face, at the beginning we have no idea what a monster this man is, nor do we have a clue as to what he is planning to do to his adoring young bride. As a result Cukor manages to drag out the suspense in an almost Hitchcock-like fashion until it becomes nearly unbearable. Boyer's Gregory Anton is one of the great screen villains; wearing the mask of a loving husband, he proceeds to drive his wife to the brink of madness in such an effective manner that the term "gaslighting" actually entered the vernacular, as in "He's gaslighting us (meaning "he's lying/misleading/playing us")."
To relieve some of the darkness of the main plot, Cukor provides two comic relief characters: local busybody Miss Thwaites, played to a fare-thee-well by the great Dame May Witty, and housemaid Nancy, a saucy little tart who flirts openly with Gregory while at the same time not bothering to conceal her disdain for his wife. Angela Lansbury, all of eighteen years old and making her film debut, sank her teeth into the role of the trampy little bitch and got an Oscar nomination right out of the box for it. It is one of the most auspicious debuts of one of the greatest actresses Hollywood, Broadway, and television have ever been graced with.
Also on hand to solve the mystery is Brian Cameron (the great Joseph Cotten in yet another of his fine performances), a Scotland Yard detective who as a young boy idolized Paula's aunt, a famous opera star who was brutally murdered when the girl was in her teens.
All of this sounds like I am knocking Bergman, but I really don't mean to. She is one of my favorite actresses of all time, and her performance here is excellent; I am just not sure if it is Oscar-worthy. At any rate I still think Stanwyck should have won. And Bergman gave Oscar performances in many other films for which she was not always recognized with so much as a nomination: NOTORIOUS, CASABLANCA, and THE INN OF THE SIXTH HAPPINESS come to mind, to mention only a few.
At any rate, any film effective enough that its title becomes part of the language is obviously operating on a higher level than most films, Oscar or no Oscar.