Gaslight

A young opera singer haunted by the memory of her aunt’s murder marries a handsome pianist and settles down in her relative’s long-abandoned, overstuffed London mansion, where footsteps echo in the attic, gaslights dim, and secrets come to light… George Cukor’s celebrated noir-melodrama is a deeply ambiguous study of psychological abuse, anchored by a terrific cast (Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and an 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her first film role) and suffused with a sense of creeping dread. At its famous last-act reversal of power, Gaslight transforms from a masterful woman-in-trouble melodrama into something much more haunting: a reflection on the origins of emotional violence, marked by a rare degree of sympathy for the abuser as well as the abused.