In 2012 I watched the movie Gaslight (1944). I think everyone knows the term “gaslighting” and that it got its name from this movie. Only it didn’t – there was a 1940 British movie version four years before the Ingrid Bergman/ Angela Lansbury 1944 version.
I wasn’t interested in the 1940 version until I read that in 1944 the studio making the Ingrid Bergman version bought up all the copies of the 1940s version. Why? Why? Because the 1940 version (seen here) makes the 1944 version look sick, in my opinion.
This is not what critics evidently believe, but I disagree. The early version clips along at less than 90 minutes, while the 1944 version packs in backstory and plods for just shy of two hours. The husband is far more evil in the early version – there’s no reason to torture his wife except he’s just an asshole. It’s 1940 no explanation why people were being evil or fragile, in 1940 they just are.
And now, of course before 1940 there was a play (Gas Light/aka Angel Street), and now that I’ve heard the radio dramatization it’s almost word for word the 1940s movie.
What is really terrifying? The term “gaslighting” didn’t come to mean psychological manipulation until the sixties. I suppose in the interval the practice was just called “married life.”