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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 717
Released: February 3, 2004 |
| Our Price: $5.79 |
| Used Price: $6.99 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Beautiful and trusting, Paula Anton is slowly tormented by mysterious happenings in her luxurious Victorian home. The suspect is her devoted husband. But viewing the world through the dim glow of the gaslight, it is difficult to tell what is real and what is imagined.
Description of Gaslight:
George Cukor helped transform a moody Victorian stage melodrama (previously filmed in Britain in 1939) into a gothic Hollywood romantic thriller. Ingrid Bergman stars as a meek, uncertain heiress courted and married in a whirlwind romance by the debonair Charles Boyer, but when they move back into her childhood home she begins losing her grip on reality and becomes convinced that her husband is trying to drive her insane. Joseph Cotten, rather stiff and colorless next to the anguished Bergman and charming and lively Boyer, is the heroic Scotland Yard detective who becomes enamored of the skittish woman who is slowly succumbing to madness. The grand, glorious sets and elegant photography recall Hitchcock's Rebecca, another lush Hollywood gothic melodrama of a retiring young wife overwhelmed by the history of her abode, and Gaslight is still assumed by some to be a Hitchcock film (the Bergman connection doesn't help the confusion). It's really a rather straightforward thriller with a forced plot device, but under Cukor's control the tightly constructed script is given the full MGM treatment, then reined in for intimate moments of harrowing suspense. Boyer brilliantly played off his continental lover reputation by adding an undercurrent of malevolence and Bergman won an Oscar for her haunted performance. It also marks the memorable debut of Angela Lansbury as a saucy maid unwittingly drawn into Boyer's master plan. --Sean Axmaker
Gaslight Reviews:
gaslight 
2009-12-14 - The movie was great. Unfortunately it broke in transit. I was able to view the majority of the video and Loved it. The seller also responded in a timely manner.
The light is a bit dim... 
2009-11-30 - Bergman and Boyer really carry this otherwise rather lightweight thriller. Don't get me wrong, this is a good film, and one that I recommend, but it cannot be understated that this film has been done before, and done better (just 4 years earlier at that). The mood is captured (if a tad stiffened by the weightlessness of a lot of the scenes) and the acting is outstanding (by the two leads) but the overall finished product is a tad underwhelming to tell you the truth.
The film opens with a mysterious murder that leaves a young and scarred woman named Paula fleeing for her sanity basically. A decade later and she is swept off her feet by the charming yet obviously creepy Gregory Anton and gets herself married and winds up back in the house where the murder took place. As the days tick by she finds that either she is losing her mind or her husband is playing some dirty tricks on her. He keeps her prisoner in the house, blaming her isolation on her health (she's forgetful and a danger to herself and others). A young man who was once infatuated with Paula's deceased aunt begins to pick away at the shell around the Anton family and soon discovers that Gregory is not what he seems.
Well, he is what he seems, but for some reason Paula doesn't see it like we do.
For me, this film lives and dies in the hands of Bergman and Boyer. Bergman won the Oscar for her dynamic portrayal of a woman going mad. Her final scene, in the attic, is OUTSTANDING to put it simply. Boyer is just devilishly good here and, in my humble opinion, is the films standout. His character is over the top (hammy according to some) and very obvious (how you can NOT think he is a creep up to no good is BEYOND me) but it works gloriously for what the film is trying to accomplish. He is just too much fun to ignore.
For me, the supporting cast is just stand-ins really. I don't understand Lansbury's nomination, beings that she doesn't really do much of anything. It's a decent and serviceable performance, but nothing to write home about. I agree that Cotten is stiff. Dame May Whitty is a stereotype, but she is fun to watch so I forgive her.
The thing for me is that the films conclusion (aside from the Bergman confrontation) is a bit underwhelming. Finding out what the source of the noises were was, while predictable, a bit boring. I just wanted to wowed by something totally intense and just `IN YOUR FACE' and I just got something I saw coming a mile away. The film is good, and if you get a chance to see it I recommend you do for the stunning lead performances, but this is no Hitchcock (even though many believe it is) and in my opinion he did this very same thing much better.
Gaslight, Far and Away, Tudors, The 2nd season
2009-08-14 - "Gaslight", great old picture, beautifully lit in black and white, very good acting all around, a keeper. A MUST in any serious movie collectors file.
"Far and Away" Tom Cruise, in my opinion, gave his best performances in this movie and in "Rainman". The rest of his stuff is either special effects, badly done or totally inept as in "Walkuere".
The Tudors, second season, I did not yet get a change to watch it.
Perfect!
2009-07-06 - The DVD arrived promptly and in perfect condition. We are very happpy with the service!
Gaslight times two
2009-07-05 - I especially liked the fact that this dvd had the original British version, filmed several years earlier than the Ingrid Bergman one, on the flip side of the dvd. So I got two Gaslights for the price of one. Of course, the Bergman one is wonderful so I was very interested to see if the British version could hold it's own. It did. It was quite different in tone and style, but still, I enjoyed it immensely. Excellent buy for my "favorite movie" collection.
