Gaslight screening at the Barbican cinema
Turning up the wick on the Gaslight man - Times Online
I went to see Dickinson’s Gaslight last night, and it was enourmous fun. The film is finely - some would say over - wrought melodrama, with Anton Walbrook pinching his lips, arching his eyebrows and curling his vowels to great effect. His villainy is so fox-like and grand it could be seen as over-the-top - his face goes from boiling anger, to saucy leer, to heavy-lidded insouciance in split seconds. But that would imply that it wasn’t a great performance and it is, because when you are not grinning and revelling at his dripping wickedness, you are genuinely nervous of his next move on poor wibbly-eyed Diana Wynyard.
Tragically, the 1944 Hollywood remake with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman not only eclipses this version in popularity - exacerbated by MGM’s aptly Louis Bauer-like dastardly attempts to supress the Thorold Dickinson version - but it is the only version currently published on DVD. Apparently there was a version with the Dickinson film added as an extra to the 1944 version(!) but - judging by recent Amazon reviews - this edition seems to have been curtailed.
This Barbican screening was introduced by Philip Horne and Peter Swaab, authors of Thorold Dickinson: A world of film: A World of Film which I will be snapping up as soon as possible. We heard some fascinating information - such as that Gaslight was filmed on a closed set, and all scenes were filmed in sequence - unlike most films that are shot in whatever order is convenient.
I was also lucky (and pushy) enough to collar Peter Swaab briefly on my way out to talk Walbrook and ask to be emailed any tips on sources of AW information - and Mr. S was thoroughly nice and obliging too, so buy his (and Philip Horne’s) book!
