The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society discussion
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Gas Light
Patrick Hamilton: book by book
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Gas Light
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Thorold Dickinson (1903-84), who directed Gaslight, is an interesting character. That he directed only nine features can be attributed to the British film industry's mistrust of the intellectual left-wing cineaste and union activist – and his own distaste for making pablum.
Martin Scorcese described him as "a uniquely intelligent, passionate artist... They're not in endless supply."
More info here
Another Gaslight review..
Gaslight (1940), adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play, is as European in flavor as Dickinson's sublime Pushkin adaptation The Queen of Spades (1949). A replacement director on both, Dickinson had 20 days to prepare for the first film; three for the second. Both star Anton Walbrook as a venal predator of vulnerable women. In Gaslight, he is the urbane psychopath, Paul Mallen, who has convinced his nervy patrician wife, Bella (Diane Wynyard), that she's insane. A jovial ex-copper (Frank Pettingell), who once investigated a murder at the townhouse Bella later bought for the couple, suspects foul play.
A suspenseful mystery-thriller set in rooms stuffed with hideous Victorian knick-knacks, the movie is implicitly critical of the idle rich during wartime. It also targets upper-class male contempt for women high-born and low: having driven Bella into evident frigidity, Paul toys with his household's parlour maid (Cathleen Cordell), who proposes he take her as his mistress. Slumming for fun, he even takes this hussy to the music hall, its wanton can-can routine contrasted with the posh, prissy piano recital where he engineers Bella's humiliating collapse.
From the Arts Desk - whole review is here.
Mod
Thorold Dickinson's classic British thriller stars Anton Walbrook as a supposedly devoted husband who is trying to drive his wife insane as he searches for a fortune in rubies hidden in their London home.
Good spot, Nigey. 11am though! I may have to invest in one of these digital recorder devices this week. I'd incur directorial disdain if I switched the Reception area plasma from BBC News 24 and made myself comfortable to watch Gaslight rather than appear to be working on carbon footprint reduction or raising our Corporate Social Responsibility profile.
Mod
Actually, credit where credit's due - it was Val who spotted it and told me.
David wrote: "'I'd incur directorial disdain if I switched the Reception area plasma from BBC News 24 and made myself comfortable to watch Gaslight rather than appear to be working on carbon footprint reduction or raising our Corporate Social Responsibility profile. "
That made me chuckle. Though, as an aside, wouldn't it be better to turn the TV off completely if your trying to reduce your carbon footprint?
I see what you mean! Any verdict from anyone fortunate enough to see it?
Mod
...that said, I have seen it once before, a couple of years back and it is most splendid. Anton Walbrook is particularly fine as the devious husband trying to convince his poor wife she is insane. I eagerly anticipate my second viewing.
Anyone local to the Brighton & Hove area might like to hear that the Rottingdean Drama Society are putting on a production of Gaslight. I don't think they've updated the website but I saw in The Grange's display cabinet an advert for the imminent performance. They're still advertising the auditions: http://www.rottingdeandramasociety.co... So anyone particularly keen can get involved!
Mod
Gaslight
October 2016
By Patrick Hamilton
Directed by Gill Lake
Synopsis
This classic thriller is set in Victorian London. Jack Manningham is slowly, deliberately, driving his wife, Bella, insane. He has almost succeeded when help arrives in the form of a retired detective, Rough, who believes Manningham to be a thief and murderer. Aided by Bella, Rough proves Manninghams true identity and finally Bella achieves a few moments of sweet revenge for the suffering inflicted on her.
Auditions
This production has not started rehearsals yet, for more information about taking part please visit the auditions page.
http://www.rottingdeandramasociety.co...
Anyone finding themselves in the general vicinity of Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, could probably do worse than checking out a new stage production of Patrick Hamilton's Angel Street...http://dcmetrotheaterarts.com/2016/10...
Mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pusAV...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmxHH...
Leading lady Kara Tointon has received universal critical acclaim for her West End stage roles including the Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. Further stage credits include the West End revivals of Ayckbourn’s Absent Friends and Relatively Speaking. Television credits include winning the 2013 series of BBC television’s Strictly Come Dancing, Rosalie Selfridge in ITV’s Mr Selfridge, and most recently portraying Maria for the ITV production of The Sound Of Music Live! in December 2015. Complete casting includes Rupert Young who is best known for portraying Sir Leon in the BBC drama series Merlin and Keith Allen direct from the much lauded West End production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming.
This new production of Gaslight is the definitive seat-gripping drama not to be missed. A tense and hugely satisfying evening of great British theatre.
http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/gasli...
Mod
Hurrah!
Gaslight is written by Patrick Hamilton, one of the 20th century’s most renowned British writers, and stars the highly acclaimed stage and television actress Kara Tointon (The Halcyon, Mr Selfridge, The Sound of Music Live!). Kara is joined by BBC Merlin’s Rupert Young and Keith Allen direct from the critically acclaimed West End production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming.
The play tells a chilling tale: while Jack Manningham is on the town each evening his wife Bella is home alone. She can’t explain the disappearance of familiar objects, the mysterious footsteps overhead or the ghostly flickering of living room gaslight – is she losing her mind? Does the terror exist in her imagination or are dark secrets living in her home? The surprise arrival of retired Detective Rough leads to a shocking discovery that will shake her respectable Victorian marriage to its core.
Gaslight is directed by Anthony Banks whose credits include Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie, which visited the Theatre Royal Brighton in July last year. Anthony was an associate director at the National Theatre until 2014 where he commissioned and developed one hundred new plays for NT Connections.
This masterpiece of suspenseful playwriting will have you on the edge of your seat. A tense and hugely satisfying evening of great British theatre, this new production of Gaslight is one not to be missed.
http://thelatest.co.uk/brighton/2017/...
Roy Wood and Patrick Hamilton on back-to-back evenings? You're truly living the life of Riley, ain'tcha? The new year can only go downhill starting Tuesday morning.
Mod
Tuesday is meeting up with pals for a curry
Saturday is a friend's 50th celebration
Wednesday is my weekly slot helping with a youth group
Phew!
Mod
Gaslight, Theatre Royal Brighton - Monday 6 Feb 2017
I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Gaslight on the stage last night. I’d only ever seen the British film adaptation, and I have not read the original theatrical script either (must put that right soon), so I was not sure how the play differs from the film. In short, it’s better. It all takes place in the Mannigham’s living room and is more lean and taut. The likely denouement is signalled quite early, but this does not diminish the dramatic impact of the story.
Kara Tointon and Rupert Young are fine as the Mannighams - the couple at the centre of the story - but Keith Allen steals the show with his larger than life performance as Rough, the former detective.
If you’re a Patrick Hamilton fan, which I think we can take as a given, then this is well worth watching. Given his many magnificent novels it’s easy for modern readers to forget that it was the hit plays Gaslight and Rope for which Patrick Hamilton was best known during his lifetime. Gaslight really stands the test of time and this is a splendid revival. I hope it does really well - it certainly deserves to.
Sadly, I have never seen "Gaslight" on stage, but it reads very well indeed. Of the two films the original UK 1940 Thorold Dickinson is far superior to the 1944 Hollwood remake ( despite the delightful performance by Angela Lansbury as the naughty maidservant in the latter) Inspector Rough also appears in another much less successful melodrama by Hamilton, "The Governess", a version of which was first published in 2015, and which had a provincial but no West End run with Flora Robson in 1944.Interestingly, the whole basic idea of varying gas levels covering dirty deeds was first mooted in 1930 in "To Be Hanged", the first novel by Patrick's brother, Bruce Hamilton.
Mod
This is great triv...
Andrew wrote: "Interestingly, the whole basic idea of varying gas levels covering dirty deeds was first mooted in 1930 in "To Be Hanged", the first novel by Patrick's brother, Bruce Hamilton."
I was convinced that it was Patrick who had first coined the phrase.
Interesting how it's also taken on a whole new lease of life in the last few months...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-ra...
^ By the by, even that article states...
For the purist, the definition comes from the play Gaslight, written by Patrick Hamilton in 1938 and made into a film two years later by Thorold Dickinson. It is a mannered but compelling vision of domestic abuse, in which a husband, with lies, verbal aggression and disappointed certainty manipulates his wife into questioning her sanity, whereupon he becomes her only mooring to the real world and his accusations become more potent.
There is a great article by Hamilton's biographer Sean French on the 2007 West End revival of "Gaslight", 6 Jun 2007. The article is called The Lost Genius". I am too old and techno unsavvy to know how to put a link or a copy of the article in here, but this should be enough data for anybody to find it on Google. It is worth it!
Mod
Great stuff yet again Andrew
Here is that very article...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/200...
The Hebden Bridge Little Theatre presents Gaslight in April 2018. Just my luck... I'll be in Hebden Bridge in June.Details here, for those with better timing than myself...
http://hblt.co.uk/diary/gaslight
Mod
How galling. That would have been a wonderful aligning of the stars. I've never been to Hebden Bridge but have only heard good things about the place. I once camped with a bunch of kids from Hebden Bridge, as part of a youth organisation I volunteer with. They were a free thinking bunch - v politicised and aware.
I would’ve never even been aware of Hebden Bridge, but Max and his wife spent some time there this past summer and, having enjoyed it so much, will be taking us there for four days in mid-June. It looks absolutely stunning, and the four of us have rented a beautiful old cottage that backs right onto the canal.Still, yes, to be able to see a stage production of Patrick Hamilton while there would’ve been brilliant!
Mod
A contemporary reimagining of the classic 1938 stage thriller by Patrick Hamilton and from which the term “gaslighting” derives.
Jonathan Holloway's modern adaptation is set in the present, with a deliciously vintage feel and scored with original music by Imelda May.
Our modern adaptation is set in London’s fashionable Dalston where Jack Manningham has used his wife’s recently inherited money to buy a huge period property - a former bell foundry - which they will renovate. They occupy a small habitable part of the ground floor and basement. This previously neglected ramshackle building is lit by gas, as it was in Victorian times.
Jack is a sagging movie producer with one hit to his name and whose financial affairs are in ruin. The cache of jewels hidden in the house in Hamilton's original is here replaced by three works of fiction by famous authors, all of which have been lost to history, are out of copyright and represent potential movie dynamite.
Starring James Purefoy as Jack, Rebecca Night as Bella and Cathy Tyson as DCI Nina Rawe.
Also featuring Lacey Turner as Tippi, Macadie Amoros as Ishani, and Richard Lintern as DI Reynolds.
Directed by Johnny Vegas
A Woolyback production for BBC Radio 4
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001...
That sounds promising. Johnny Vegas directing will no doubt prove interesting. No word of a broadcast date, but I’ll keep the antennae tuned in.
Mod
Will be on Sounds (and online) straight afterwards which is where I'll dive in
No problem!I’m certain I alteady get full value from the very reasonable licence fee through my use of Sounds and iPlayer alone, and will be using the former to tune into Gaslight, probably more than once.
Mod
Nigeyb wrote: "Yes, me too. Even in its current sad and emasculated state I still love the BBC"So do I Nigeyb. I've rediscovered BBC radio this year and this looks promising. Thanks for the link.
I haven't come across Johnny Vegas in a directing role before - is it something he's known for now? And does he have an interest in Patrick Hamilton?
Mod
If you search for Gaslight on the Sounds app there's a 1 minute trailer for it.
My Steely Dan box set, like a faithful hound, is never far away. I can see it from here, propped up against the far walk within easy reach of the house hi-fi. I have often turned into Homer Simpson in his praise of sweetmeats, by substituting “Steely Dan” in Homer’s articulated musing, “Doughnuts - is there ANYTHING they can’t do?”I thought that the author of this, though, might have given our man a bit of credit (no criticism of the Dan though - that won’t do).
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/steely-d...
Mod
Don't hate me David but I've never got the Dan and have given up trying.
I can’t hate you, my friend - it’s merely personal musical taste. Although Chicory Tip? Yikes. 😎
The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society
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I've added Gas Light for a group read in April 2014 so here's a thread in readiness.
Has anyone read Gas Light already?
I'm only familiar with the British film version that came out in 1940. As I understand it, it sticks quite closely to Patrick Hamilton's original script.
Patrick Hamilton's original play Gas Light was a huge hit in when it opened in 1938. The success of Gas Light on stage, and subsequently the British 1940 film adaptation directed by Thorold Dickinson, encouraged Hollywood studio MGM to buy the remake rights in the early 1940s, with a clause insisting that all existing prints of Dickinson's British version be destroyed. Fortunately Dickinson didn’t comply and the original film version of Gas Light survived.
I have only seen the Thorold Dickinson 1940 version once, and I thought it was very good and has aged remarkably well. I haven't seen the MGM version but all the reviews I have read suggest it is also good but slightly less successful.
Thorold Dickinson did a great job of evoking a terrifying Victorian tale. Anton Walbrook (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes) stars as the terrifying husband who puts the sanity of his fragile and tortured wife (Diana Wynyard) under siege. Anton Walbrook is brilliant and is a superlative rogue. The film keeps the viewer questioning the final outcome, using psychology and atmosphere to ratchet up the tension.
The BFI have recently reissued the 1940 Thorold Dickinson version as a combined DVD and BluRay package with a host of extras, many of which seem to have little to do with the actual film, but I expect are interesting in their own right. Here's the description from the BFI website, with the extras...
Blu-ray / DVD premiere release for the newly remastered version of Thorold Dickinson's dark and menacing psychological 1940 classic.
Based on Patrick Hamilton's celebrated stage play, Gaslight is a harrowing and claustrophobic film about domestic fear. Anton Walbrook (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes) stars as the terrifying husband who puts the sanity of his fragile and tortured wife (Diana Wynyard) under siege.
The success of Gaslight on stage and film encouraged Hollywood studio MGM to buy the remake rights in the early 1940s, with a clause insisting that all existing prints of Dickinson's British version be destroyed. Unseen for many decades, this definitive version has been digitally restored by the BFI.
Extras
* Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
* Spanish A B C (Thorold Dickinson, Sidney Cole, 1938, 20 mins): a short film on the Republican efforts to improve education standards during the Spanish Civil War
* Behind the Spanish Lines (Sidney Cole, Thorold Dickinson, 1938, 20 mins): a companion piece to Spanish Civil War
* Westward Ho! (Thorold Dickinson, 1940, 9 mins): a short film to promote the evacuation of urban children to rural areas
* Miss Grant Goes to the Door (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1940, 7 mins): a short film about a German invasion from a story by Dickinson
* Yesterday is Over Your Shoulder (Thorold Dickinson, 1940, 9 mins): a short film encouraging unskilled workers to join free, government organised, engineering training schemes
* Original promotional materials and documents from the BFI National Archive (downloadable PDFs, DVD only)
Anyway, I'm posting this now, as - when we do this as a Group read in April 2014, it might also be interesting to consider either (or both) of the film adaptations too.
I will probably buy the BFI reissue of the 1940 Thorold Dickinson version as I like it very much.