Gaslight

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I popped this on to my queue a while back, for my K2K, as it was an oldie with a neat sounding plot and it starred most beautiful woman ever Ingrid Bergman and the awesome Joseph Cotton. It came up, to my dismay, as a "Very Long Wait" on Netflix, now it just says unavailable. By happy coincidence, this turned out to be on TCM right after this happened, so I Tivoed it. God damn, I love TCM and my parents' Comcast fake-Tivo.

This is a pretty good, slow-burn type of thriller (noir, perhaps? It has a lot of shadows and fog) with a good cast and visual style. It is also is apparently the first screen appearance of Angela Lansbury, and it's really weird seeing her as a not-old person.

If I have one complaint, it's that the mystery is apparent from the beginning. I think for a while we're supposed to wonder if Bergman is losing her mind, but I found it clear from the get-go that Charles Boyer's character was simply trying to make her think that she's going mad. This diminishes some of the suspense the movie works at building. His performance isn't ambiguous enough, it's always clear that he's the villain.

Boyer gets top billing... I am entirely unfamiliar with this fellow, and I'm pretty sure Bergman has a bigger role than him, but he's good in it as Bergman's manipulative, con man husband. So I'm not opposed to seeing more of him in the future, but I'd still rather there be more Cotton and less Boyer.

Joseph Cotton is the fucking man. I wish he was my Uncle Charlie.