Gaslight

Gaslight (released in the United States as Angel Street) is a 1940 British psychological thriller film directed by Thorold Dickinson which stars Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, and features Frank Pettingell. The film adheres more closely to the original play upon which it is based – Patrick Hamilton's Gas Light (1938) – than does the 1944 MGM remake. The play had been performed on Broadway as Angel Street, so when the MGM remake was released in the United States, it was given the same title as the American production. Plot In Pimlico, London, Alice Barlow (Marie Wright) is murdered by an unknown man, who then ransacks her house, ripping her furniture apart as if desperately searching for something. The house remains empty for many years, until newlyweds Paul and Bella Mallen move in. Bella (Diana Wynyard) soon finds herself misplacing small objects; and, before long, Paul (Anton Walbrook) has her believing she is losing her sanity. B. G. Rough (Frank Pettingell), a former detective involved in the original murder investigation, begins to suspect him of Alice Barlow's murder. Paul lights the gas lamps to search the closed-off upper floors, which causes the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly. When Bella comments on the lights' dimming, he tells her that she is imagining things. Bella is persuaded that she is hearing noises, unaware that Paul enters the upper floors from the house next door. The sinister interpretation of the change in light levels is part of a larger pattern of deception to which Bella is subjected, including berating her for losing a brooch he gave her which he actually took and hid inside his locked rolltop desk. Rough gets wind of Paul's plan to have Bella certified insane and institutionalized so that he can carry on with Nancy, their promiscuous maid, and summons Bella's concerned cousin Vincent Ullswater for help in getting her out of Paul's grasp. After Paul verbally abuses Bella before leaving to attend a music hall show with Nancy, Rough comes to the house and reveals to Bella that Paul is really the wanted Louis Bauer, who has returned to the house to search for the rubies he was unable to find after murdering his aunt, Alice Barlow. Furthermore, due to Bauer's bigamous marriage to another woman in Australia, his marriage to Bella is invalid. Rough forces open Paul's desk in search of evidence that Paul is Bauer, interrupted when Bella sees the gaslight flicker shortly before Bauer returns to the house.