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Thorold Dickinson
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Scene Photo

Gaslight
Series: Thorold Dickinson’s World of Cinema
Director: Thorold Dickinson, Country: United Kingdom, Release: 1940, Runtime: 84

Dickinson’s first major film was based on Patrick Hamilton’s play Angel Street. He took over the project only after the original director had been dismissed, having only 20 days of preparation time before the cameras started rolling on what became a taut, beautifully detailed Victorian psychological thriller. Where the American version by George Cukor, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, is visually lush, Dickinson’s film is austere and visually exacting. Where Cukor made a film about a beautiful woman who’s fallen in love with the wrong man, Dickinson did something more daring by making a film about an awkward and somewhat homely woman (Diana Wynyard) who finally learns the truth about her autocratic husband (Anton Walbrook) and in so doing liberates herself from his iron grip. Hamilton was thrilled with Dickinson’s version, and paid its director what he considered to be the highest compliment by calling it “a French film in English.” David O. Selznick was also a fan, and he invited Dickinson to America on the strength of Gaslight. His reply: “Sorry…there’s a war on.”




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