Review of Gaslight (1944) by Michael O — 09 Jul 2013

Ingrid Bergman is a woman in peril, being driven slowly insane by sadistic bastard Charles Boyer. I don't think that's a spoiler, as it is fairly apparent from the get-go that he's a bad guy.

I suppose how and why he is doing this is the great mystery -- and it takes Joseph Cotten, playing himself again, to solve it for us. George Cukor's direction is sometimes stylish with a few interesting tracking shots and some "big head" close ups (with a gauzy filter on the lens for some shots of Bergman), but the art direction and set decoration really do evoke the Victorian period.

With my present-day attitudes, I hoped that Bergman would be strong (not weak), that she wouldn't need to be rescued by Cotton, that the villain wouldn't have a foreign accent, but in 1944 these things probably went unnoticed.