Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook in Gaslight

Paul Mallen: Anton Walbrook
Bella Mallen: Diana Wynyard
Rough: Frank Pettingell
Nancy: Cathleen Cordell
Ullswater: Robert Newton
Cobb: Jimmy Hanley
Elizabeth: Minnie Rayner

Director: Thorold Dickinson
Screenplay: A.R. Rawlinson, Bridget Boland
Based on a play by Patrick Hamilton
Cinematography: Bernard Knowles
Music: Richard Addinsell

One of the more famous crimes of MGM was its attempt to destroy the negative and all existing prints of Thorold Dickinson's 1940 version of Gaslight in order to avoid any comparisons between it and the 1944 remake directed by George Cukor. It failed somehow, and the two versions can now be seen back to back. The 1944 film is superb entertainment, winning an Oscar for Ingrid Bergman and showcasing Charles Boyer to very good effect. By its side, Dickinson's version can feel a little undernourished -- or is it just that the later version is overfed, fattened up by Hollywood largesse? I feel very kindly toward the earlier film, which doesn't attempt to disguise the fact that it's sheer melodrama with backstories that try to add psychological realism. All we really need to do is accept the film's Victorian subtext and to know is that Paul Mallen is a foreigner and that his wife, Bella, grew up breathing the pure air of the English countryside to see whose side the film is on. Just the way the Viennese-born Anton Walbrook smooths his mustache is enough to let us know he's a rotter. And was anyone more born to play the gaslighted victim than Diana Wynyard who, with her slight strabismus and her habit of staring into the distance, seems to be seeing things that no one else can? The 84-minute run time sets everything up efficiently and moves steadily through some truly suspenseful moments to its tables-turned conclusion. The 1944 remake runs half an hour longer and while its performances may be more elaborate (and in the case of the teenage Angela Lansbury's conniving maid, superior), Thorold's version keeps us nicely tantalized. The casting of Robert Newton as Bella's cousin is amusing, considering that Newton would go on to make his name as an actor with the terrifying Bill Sikes in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948). Those of us who saw that film first may suspect that he's up to no good in Gaslight, but we'd be wrong.

Turner Classic Movies

Cavalcade (Frank Lloyd, 1933)

There are lots of forgettable best picture Oscar winners: Who today watches The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936), The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle, 1937), or Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947)? But Cavalcade may be the most forgettable (and forgotten) of them all. Based on a play by Noël Coward adapted by Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien, it's the saga of 33 years in the lives of a wealthy London couple, Robert (Clive Brook) and Jane Marryot (Diana Wynyard). Its portrait of their lives and the lives of their servants may have inspired the popular British TV series Upstairs Downstairs, and through it the even more popular Downton Abbey, both of which cover pretty much the same time period. In Cavalcade, as in the two TV series, the families suffer losses from the sinking of the Titanic and from World War I, and experience the social upheaval of a changing class system. But Cavalcade tries to cram it all into less than two hours, and tends to be more blatantly nostalgic about the passing scene. Unlike the creators of the later TV series, Coward and his adapters didn't have the benefit in 1933 of seeing what effect the events of the first third of the twentieth century would have on Britain and the world. It settles for a bit of prophecy in the form of a montage in which various talking heads rant about disarmament, communism, atheism, Christianity, and other ideologies, including a rather corny scene in a louche night club where same-sex couples seem to be on the verge of making out. (The film is pre-Code, so the strictures against depicting homosexuality haven't kicked in yet, though it's clear that the film -- despite Coward's own sexual orientation -- disapproves of it.) In addition to the best picture Oscar, Cavalcade also won a second Oscar for its director, Frank Lloyd, who had been the first director to be so honored, for The Divine Lady (1929). Wynyard also received a nomination for best actress, losing to a newcomer, Katharine Hepburn in Morning Glory (Lowell Sherman, 1933). Wynyard had a more successful career on stage than in movies. In Cavalcade she tries to register emotion by staring meditatively into the middle distance, which often looks like she has spotted something troubling on the wallpaper. The rest of the cast includes Herbert Mundin and Una O'Connor as the Marryots' servants, and Frank Lawton as Joe Marryot, the younger son, all three of whom would be reunited in a much better movie, David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935). For the record, some of the films that Cavalcade beat for best picture include 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon), I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy), and Little Women (Cukor).