Skip ahead ten years and Paula has become the beautiful Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman ( Casablanca – so memorable as Ilse). We see Paula in the carriage being advised by her officious-looking companion that she will be going to live in Italy with a guardian and it’s best she forget about the past. An onlooker glances at the newspaper in his hand with the headline, “Thornton Square Murder Unsolved.” A famous opera diva was strangled in the home she shared with her niece, Paula. But at least the people gathered outside in ritzy Thornton Square can make out the figure of a young teenaged girl who is being escorted to a carriage from house #9. So… the 1944 film directed by George Cukor, Gaslight begins in late 1800’s London where there is a fashionable “fog” hanging over the city from all of the coal soot. Apparently, there is a temporary disruption of gas flow to a lit lamp which causes it to dim when another lamp in the house is lit. (But I also don’t understand how the current electrical grid works either.)įrighteningly, the highly flammable gas is waiting in pipes to accidentally blow up the house, or –when it works right– light the house when the gas on a lamp fixture is switched on and then lit. But this is because I live in the 21st Century and didn’t know the mechanics of old timey light delivery. And every time she hears footsteps, the gaslights in her room dim. One of the things that he says she is imagining is the sound of footsteps above her bedroom at night. A villainous husband wants his wife out of the way and proceeds to make her think she’s going mad. The origin of the verb goes back to Gaslight, a play staged in London in 1938. The perpetrator might say things like: It was just a joke (Lie)or I was trying to help (Bigger lie) or That’s not what happened (Biggest Lie). It involves manipulating and lying to a person so that they question their sanity. Synopsis: In late 1800’s London, a creepy husband gaslights his wife. (Streaming on HBO Max and Amazon Prime.) Gaslighting creep accuses his wife of pilfering his Kinder Surprise Egg mini-toy.

Gaslight 1944 film studio