Watching my March movie for Knowing Noir was a bit of a rollercoaster. My first instinct was that I had made a grave mistake, and the movie wasn't a noir at all. My second was a growing understanding of just how slippery a term "film noir" actually is, and that it can apply to movies that, on their surface, don't seem to qualify as noir.
Fortunately, every point of this rollercoaster was a moment where I smiled with glee in terms of the film's quality.
George Cukor's 1944 film Gaslight was a film I have wanted to see for some time, and was glad this series was finally giving me the opportunity. It's the rare film that has provided us a household word, one that has become well-known to anyone who follows politics, especially recently. Numerous articles critical of Donald Trump have described what he does to followers and opponents alike as "gaslighting," as denying the reality of clearly observable truths merely through his power of suggestion. Of course, like most political terminology, both sides use it to describe the tactics of the other, so Trump's own base would be quite familiar with it as well.
The term comes from this film, and it has to do with one small detail of a much larger scheme to convince a young married woman, Paula (Ingrid Bergman), that she's going crazy. Her new husband, Gregory (Charles Boyer), has tricked her into moving back into the house where her aunt, a famous opera singer, was murdered when Paula was just 14 -- and was present in the house at the time. Paula is resistant to the idea, but he uses smooth reasoning and other tricks to reduce her objection to it. His purpose is to search for the opera singer's valuable jewels, a search that was interrupted when Paula's arrival on the scene forced the murderer to flee. Gregory was that man, though of course Paula doesn't know that.
In order to search for the jewels among the singer's belongings, which have been moved to the attic to placate Paula, Gregory has to create an atmosphere of self-doubt around Paula, by suggesting she's hearing and seeing things, losing some objects and stealing others. The servants in the house unwittingly help his cause, as one loathes Paula and the other is hard of hearing. Paula steadily falls apart in the wake of this apparent evidence of things she doesn't remember doing, and is considerably more susceptible to his suggestions given the revelation -- possibly false -- that her own mother was crazy.
The title comes in in terms of the lights in their home, which brighten and dim when Gregory is in the attic searching for the jewels. When he turns on the lights in one part of the house, they necessarily dim elsewhere as gas must rush into the pipes to accommodate the new request for an additional light source. However, no one in the house, including the servants, takes note of these changes in the level of the lights, proving that Gregory's subterfuge has been successful. Once no one else can confirm any of Paula's observations, she's less likely to believe his footsteps in the attic are anything more than a figment of her active imagination.
I couldn't really tell the extent to which the servants may be in on the scheme, though we never explicitly see Gregory enlisting them. Without their explicit involvement, though, Gregory could not be sure the others would support his attempt to gaslight his wife, to use the title as we would use it in a modern sense. That may be a bit of a loose thread in the plot, though it's supported by the servants' respective deficits (one's loathing, the other's poor hearing ... and eyesight?).
Okay, back to why I almost gave up on this movie as my March noir.
As you might guess from the prevalence of gaslights, this movie is not set in the 1930s or 1940s, the more typical time period for a film noir. No, it's in London of 1875, a time of carriages and lamplighters and all sorts of other Dickensian details one does not usually associated with hard-boiled detectives and femme fatales. When I checked Wikipedia, I saw that the film is described in its opening paragraph as a "psychological thriller," not a film noir.
I had wanted to see the movie anyway, and it was early enough in the month for me to just shift gears and watch something else for this series for March. But then, while still watching, I started poking around on the internet using "gaslight" and "film noir" as my search terms. And there were a lot of hits.
As it turns out, and this could just have to do with the period in which it was made, Gaslight was thought of by many as a film noir for things like its lighting scheme and its character dynamics, even if its subject matter does not traditionally suggest that assignation. (I knew I wasn't crazy for selecting it for this series. Don't gaslight me, world.) And this is where I started to learn a bit more about the debate about film noir.
There's a lot of argument about what film noir actually is. While some cineastes consider it a genre, others will go no further than to call it a "style." I learned something that might have been obvious if I'd thought about it, but is still pretty illuminating. The term "film noir" is used retrospectively to refer to the films from that period, and only came into being in the 1970s. At the time, most of those movies were referred to as "melodramas."
There is also considerable debate about particular films and whether we should consider them noir or not. The impression I got from a quick scan of the Wikipedia page is that there are a number of noir elements, only some of which may be present in any noir film we see. Whether enough are present or not for a person to call it "noir" is kind of something that person has to decide on an individual basis. It's a kind of "you know it when you see it" thing.
When I started watching Gaslight, I thought I knew I was not seeing it. The setting and time period initially ruled it out for me. But after reading that article, I know that a narrow viewpoint of what constitutes noir is not consistent with how the term has been used over the years. I feel like there are certain settings that simply could not be noir -- like, say, a movie about King Arthur and the knights of the round table -- but 19th century England is close enough in noir spirit not to be one of those dealbreakers. I suppose you could make a noir about King Arthur, too, if you got your design details right.
Lighting is a big element of noir, and this movie has the word "light" in its actual title. The idea of light works metaphorically in this film as well, as Paula is being "kept in the dark" by her husband. The actual amount of light that falls on her face, given the vicissitudes of the gaslights, is a noir detail if ever there was one.
I'm still finding my way around all the design details of a film noir, but one thing the Wikipedia article referenced was the likelihood of "unbalanced compositions." I don't specifically recall that from Gaslight, but it's something to keep my eye on going forward, and reminds me that this aspect of the mis en scene might exist in productions from a range of subject matters.
If you're going for noir's more obvious tropes, you've got a femme fatale here too. In her terrific screen debut, which actually earned her an Oscar nomination, Angela Lansbury plays the servant that loathes Paula, if not an actual co-conspirator for Gregory than certainly someone with no moral compunction about deception. Although we never see anything romantic between her and Gregory, she flirts with him recklessly and he is receptive to it. Her eyes just suggest mischief.
Overall I was just really caught up in this film, a great example of suspense and clever screenwriting. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Charles Boyer, watching him adapt on the fly to changes in his circumstances like a first-rate con man. In a moment where Paula insists on going out for the evening, and will do so even without him, Gregory's initial response is to remind her how her recent behavior makes her unfit to appear in proper society. When she won't be dissuaded, instead of doubling down and giving her additional backbone in her rebellion, he changes his tone and cheerfully accompanies her on the outing. In that moment he's developed a plan to strengthen his own position, to force Paula to make a public scene when he pretends to find his pocket watch hidden in her purse in the middle of a high society music performance. Her resulting breakdown will provide further proof, both to others and to Paula herself, that he should keep her home under lock and key, making his own job that much easier.
If I have one quibble about the plot, it's that it takes Gregory entirely too long to find the jewels, especially when they are ultimately revealed to be hiding in plain sight. However, this is necessary to get a Scotland Yard detective played by Joseph Cotten (a personal favorite) involved in the plot, so I will allow it.
This series has taken a notable turn toward the positive in the past couple months. After two sort of atypical examples of film noir, I think I'll opt for something featuring a hard-boiled detective in April, though what that will be remains to be seen.
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