![]() ![]() Carlos Clarens, in his book-length study of Cukor, describes it as “a relentless exercise in sado-masochism” that shows “an almost Gestalt dependency between tormentor and victim” (3). When it comes to plumbing the depths of one especially ghastly marriage, the remake of Gaslight (directed by George Cukor) is an infinitely richer and more complex piece of work. An overall sense of detachment bars our full access to this couple’s twisted emotional life. ![]() Yet it’s hampered by the dull and stagy presence of Diana Wynyard as the wife. The first film boasts sinuous and inventive camerawork (director Thorold Dickinson shows a special fondness for potted palms) and a sinister High Camp performance by the great Anton Walbrook. The original Gaslight survived – only just – and has since become a cause célèbre (“the film that was murdered” (2)) while the remake is routinely dismissed as “a vulgar travesty” (2). They also burned the negative and set out to destroy all existing prints. ‘I am afraid,’ she said, with dry eyes more tragic than if they had been filled with tears, ‘that I have not your taste for pretty things.’ – Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales (1)Ĭan the right film be famous for the wrong reason? In 1944, MGM not only remade a 1940 British thriller about a demonic Victorian husband driving his poor wife slowly and deliberately insane. She quickly took them off and handed them to him. She watched him, and was aware that his eyes were on the diamonds and not on her face. ![]()
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