Gaslight (1940)

Toronto Film Society presented Gaslight (1940) on Saturday, April 18, 2026 as part of the Season 78 Virtual Film Buffs Screening Series, Programme 4.

Production Company: British National Film.  Producer: John Corfield.  Director: Thorold Dickinson.  Screenplay: A. R. Rawlinson and Bridget Boland, Based on “Gas Light”, 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton.  Cinematography: Bernard Knowles.  Editor: Sidney Cole.  Music: Richard Addensell.  Run Time: 89 minutes.  Released June 25, 1940 in the UK.

Cast: Anton Walbrook (Paul Mallen), Diana Wynyard (Bella Mallen), Frank Pettingell (Rough), Cathleen Cordell (Nancy), Robert Newton (Ullswater).

This 1940 British production is a tense psychological drama starring Anton Walbrook as the manipulative husband and Diana Wynyard as Bella, his increasingly fragile wife. The film more closely follows the original play, though the 1944 Hollywood version with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer is the one most of us remember. Unfortunately, this earlier version was suppressed by MGM after it acquired the rights – perhaps unfairly, but that’s Hollywood.

In the film, Bella marries a seemingly devoted man after a traumatic past and moves with him into a London home tied to her childhood. As she settles in, strange things begin to happen – objects go missing, lights flicker, and her husband subtly insists she’s forgetful or unstable. Gradually, she begins to question her own sanity, unsure whether the disturbances are real or imagined, while a deeper mystery emerges around her husband’s behaviour and the secrets hidden within the house.

The film’s title, and that of the original play, is derived from interior gas lamps which would dim whenever another lamp or lamps were lit within the house; the natural result of reduced gas pressure. Subjected to her husband’s manipulations, Bella thinks she’s going mad; she’s convinced that someone else is in the house as she watches the gaslight dim and hears noises from the floor above.

The term “gaslighting,” meaning to manipulate someone into questioning their own beliefs or sense of reality, comes from the play and was popularized by the Hollywood film. This earlier version, however, does an excellent job of portraying that same manipulative dynamic. “Gaslighting” is now commonly used in social media and political discourse, so much so that it was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year in 2022.

Listen closely and you can hear a slight accent…a bit of a clipped way of speaking…by Anton Walbrook. Originally from Austria and born Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück, Walbrook was a very popular actor in pre-war German theatre and cinema. Alas, as the Nazis came to power, as a gay man and the son of a Jewish mother, he found it was best to leave Germany. After a short stint in Hollywood, he settled in London for much of his active acting career. Walbrook would often play a cultured, continental European. Walbrook played the lead in many films, but he is often best known for his portrayal of the controlling and tyrannical ballet impresario, Lermontov, in The Red Shoes (1948). Moira Shearer, his co-star, recalled that Walbrook was a loner on set, often wearing dark glasses and eating alone. Walbrook could be intense.

In 49th Parallel (1941), Walbrook played the leader of a Hutterite community in Canada. Partly filmed on locations in Banff National Park, Niagara Falls, Winnipeg, Corner Brook, Cape Wolstenholme, and Yoho National Park, this war-time propaganda film, made to foster sympathy for the USA to enter the war, was very well received. Sympathetic to wartime efforts, Walbrook donated half his fee to the International Red Cross.

Diana Wynyard had a successful British stage career and often played alongside Walbrook. Later in life, she played more matronly roles in films, such as in Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1951) and Island in the Sun (1957). In 1953, she received a CBE, Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. She passed at the young age of 58 from kidney disease.

The original play, Gas Light – A Victorian Thriller in Three Acts, was written by Patrick Hamilton and was a hit on both sides of the pond. In 1941, Vincent Price and his wife saw a Los Angeles performance of Gas Light and then secured the rights. Later that year, Price opened the Broadway version, renamed Angel Street for the US market, and starred as the villainous Mr. Manningham for the first year of the production. Angel Street is still credited as one of the longest-running non-musicals in Broadway history, with 1,295 total performances.

Alongside Price, Bella was played by Canadian actress, Judith Evelyn, of Winnipeg. In addition to being a stage and film actress, Ms. Evelyn had the distinction of surviving the 1939 sinking of the British ship, Athenia, the first British passenger liner to be torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in World War II. Then, to make matters worse, the lifeboat she was in was accidentally sunk by a rescue ship and she survived that too – just a bit of Canadian trivia to ponder as we enjoy the film in our comfortable chairs.

Notes by Carol Whittaker