Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

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antnield
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Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#1 Post by antnield » Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:22 pm

Dual-format edition of the 1940 version due later this year according to the latest press release.

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Matt
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#2 Post by Matt » Thu Jun 27, 2013 2:29 pm

Excellent news. Though the American remake is a classic, I slightly prefer this version for Anton Walbrook's unhinged performance.

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knives
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#3 Post by knives » Thu Jun 27, 2013 2:49 pm

Yeah, both versions are excellent, but with the DVD OOP this more than makes up for it.

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jsteffe
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#4 Post by jsteffe » Thu Jun 27, 2013 4:10 pm

Matt wrote:Excellent news. Though the American remake is a classic, I slightly prefer this version for Anton Walbrook's unhinged performance.
Yes--this is one of the best BFI announcements this year! I also love the Cukor version, especially Angela Lansbury's show-stealing supporting role. But Anton Walbrook is one of my favorite actors, and he brings real menace to this role. It's been decades since I've read the Patrick Hamilton play, but if I remember correctly the 1940 British version is closer in its overall atmosphere. I never imagined that I would get to see it in Blu!

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Finch
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#5 Post by Finch » Fri Jun 28, 2013 3:11 pm

Fantastic news and a day one purchase for me to satisfy my cravings for more Anton Walbrook!

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L.A.
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#6 Post by L.A. » Fri Jun 28, 2013 3:26 pm

Would love to see Cukor's version included as well. :)

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Sloper
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#7 Post by Sloper » Tue Jul 09, 2013 9:44 am

So happy about this. I like Cukor's version, but Dickinson's is so much better. It has a lot more going for it than just Walbrook's performance, though I find it hard to praise this film without using vague terms like 'atmosphere', 'mood', 'flair', 'style', etc. It is simply the best British film I've ever seen: scary, witty, heart-breaking, suspenseful... As the years go by the story (the original play, I guess) seems less and less like a hoary old melodrama, and more like a searing portrait of a dynamic that worms its way into and poisons most, if not all, human relationships. Our capacity, as a species, to 'gaslight' each other, to project our own neuroses and psychoses into the minds of others, is one of the great unsung horrors of the human condition. For my money, Dickinson's film evokes this horror far more eloquently, and passionately, than Cukor's.

Two or three of us discussed the differences between the two versions here in the 1940s thread a couple of years ago. Anyway, great to see this getting a proper release - finally!

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What A Disgrace
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#8 Post by What A Disgrace » Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:31 pm

Is this licensed from Warner Bros.?

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antnield
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#9 Post by antnield » Sat Oct 12, 2013 7:53 am

The BFI have posted an extract on their YouTube channel.

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MichaelB
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#10 Post by MichaelB » Sat Oct 12, 2013 8:37 am

jsteffe wrote:It's been decades since I've read the Patrick Hamilton play, but if I remember correctly the 1940 British version is closer in its overall atmosphere.
Hamilton certainly thought so - out of all the film adaptations of his work released during his lifetime, this was the one he favoured:
On the day Belgium capitulated I was in town seeing the trade show of the Gaslight film! The story was incredibly ballsed up and ruined, but actually the production and technique was excellent and Anton Walbrook gave a really first-class performance. On the whole, the thing wasn't too bad.
His biographer Nigel Jones said that he was unimpressed by the remake (which, amongst other things, got a lot of the Victorian period detail wrong) and appalled by John Brahm's mutilation of his masterpiece Hangover Square - but was particularly livid about the rumour that MGM had allegedly destroyed all prints of the 1940 version of Gaslight. Happily, this wasn't true (obviously!), but he may well have gone to his grave believing that it was.

He was also unimpressed by Rope, despite making a more direct contribution:
I was heartbroken by the film of Rope. I had thought that working with Hitchcock was going to be heaven, and put everything I knew into it. However, he utterly rejected my script, got someone else to write it, and finally produced a film which I think (and all intelligent friends agree) was sordid and practically meaningless balls.

Jonathan S
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson)

#11 Post by Jonathan S » Sat Oct 12, 2013 10:32 am

MichaelB wrote: - but was particularly livid about the rumour that MGM had allegedly destroyed all prints of the 1940 version of Gaslight. Happily, this wasn't true (obviously!), but he may well have gone to his grave believing that it was.
I too remember that "all prints destroyed" rumour and wonder what year the film's existence was discovered, or at least revealed to the public? In his book Halliwell's Hundred;
Leslie Halliwell wrote:...in the sixties a supposedly pirated print was shown at the National Film Theatre and much appreciated. Not until 1978 however could the rights be cleared for television.
I remember the excitement that July when it was chosen to head a prime-time BBC2 season of 1940s British films, all of them I think UK TV premieres. This was quite a coup at a time when old British movies were routinely used as weekday afternoon fillers, particularly on ITV where the prints were physically butchered - and visibly re-spliced (in different places by the various regions!) - to accommodate adverts and fit into 90-minute slots in the schedule.

It also used to be said MGM had destroyed all prints of Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I remember the excitement when that one finally surfaced on the BBC around 1976, albeit in a much shorter print than we now have.

HKM
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#12 Post by HKM » Sat Oct 12, 2013 11:11 am

I too remember that "all prints destroyed" rumour and wonder what year the film's existence was discovered, or at least revealed to the public?
There was a kerfuffle about it at the time: Sidney Cole, the film's editor, wrote an open letter about it in the ACT (technicians' trade union) journal in January 1944; and not long after that, in May 1944, Ernest Lindgren, curator of the BFI's National Film Library, wrote in to say the NFL had 'evidently the only copy now in existence'. He had acquired it in 1942. He and Dickinson knew each other before then and Dickinson was on the NFL's selection committee as of 1941.

The problem was that the terms of the deal kept it out of circulation. Whenever Dickinson or Lindgren wanted to show it, they had to get permission from MGM, even for film society screenings, and MGM didn't always give permission. There was no hope of a commercial re-release. It seems to have had a couple of film society screenings in the late 1940s.

(There is a bit more to the story than that -- the rights were not sold directly to MGM, but to a Mr. Ludwig Laudy Lawrence of 729 Seventh Avenue, New York City; and the person who sold them had a poor recollection of what he had done. But that's pretty much the story.)

So far as I can tell, the NFL copy was a dupe negative, and Dickinson (I think) had a special deal with Lindgren, who was legendary for not showing NFL prints unless there was a backup. At any rate Dickinson showed the film at MoMA when he was in New York in the late 1950s, and at the Slade when he started teaching there in the early 1960s. Thus there's a long description of it in Slade student Raymond Durgnat's 'Films and Feelings'.

Possibly that's what they showed at the NFT in the 1960s. But I am fairly sure that a better print, a 'fine grain copy [...] from which dupe negatives are made', was found in the early 1960s when the British film company ABPC (occupants of Elstree) somehow got its hands on the holdings of British National Films, Gaslight's producing company. So possibly not all prints were destroyed. But they might as well have been.

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MichaelB
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#13 Post by MichaelB » Sat Oct 12, 2013 12:29 pm

HKM wrote:Lindgren, who was legendary for not showing NFL prints unless there was a backup.
That remains BFI National Archive policy to this day. Although making backup copies is considerably easier now, thanks to the advent of high-definition video.

HKM
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#14 Post by HKM » Sat Oct 12, 2013 1:47 pm

Oh, Lindgren was clearly right, but it did wind people up! Apart from that, it was what was recommended by the British Kinematograph Society when the NFL was founded in 1935 -- it wasn't even Lindgren's personal policy, really. The less fastidious Langlois in this respect is the 'cool teacher' who lets you smoke on school trips and still goes to gigs.

Jonathan S
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#15 Post by Jonathan S » Sat Oct 12, 2013 2:24 pm

Thanks for the info, HKM. For what it's worth, Halliwell refers to "the negative" supposedly having been destroyed by MGM.

He also tells an amusing story of being so entranced with Gaslight in the summer of 1940, when he was still a boy, that he sat through three showings on the same day, the final one accompanied by his mother who thoughtfully brought him a cold meat pie and a bag of Maltesers. (My father, also a Boltonian and contemporary of Halliwell, used to do the same with Errol Flynn pictures in those days of continuous performances.)

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antnield
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#16 Post by antnield » Thu Oct 17, 2013 2:09 pm

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)

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MichaelB
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#17 Post by MichaelB » Fri Oct 25, 2013 8:00 am

Full specs announced:
Gaslight
A film by Thorold Dickinson
Anton Wlabrook, Diana Wynyard

Based on Patrick Hamilton's celebrated stage play, Thorold Dickinson's (The Queen of Spades, The Next of Kin) Gaslight (1940) is a harrowing and claustrophobic study of murder, abuse and lust in Victorian London. Unseen for many decades, this newly remastered version of Dickinson's psychological classic is available for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD, released with a host of extras in a Dual Format Edition on 18 November 2013 as part of the BFI's GOTHIC: The Dark Heart of Film.

By turns charming and cruel, Anton Walbrook (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) excels as the sadistic husband who attempts to drive his wife (Diana Wynyard) mad to prevent her disclosing his dark past.

The success of Gaslight on stage and film encouraged Hollywood studio MGM to buy the remake rights, with a clause insisting that all existing prints of Dickinson's version be destroyed. Fortunately, Dickinson had made a 'secret' print, which was donated to the BFI and used for reference when the film was digitally remastered by the BFI National Archive.

Special Features
• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition;
• Spanish A B C (Thorold Dickinson and 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 and 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 Thorold 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 Special Collections (downloadable PDF, DVD only);
• Illustrated booklet featuring full credits and essays from Henry K Miller, Iain Sinclair, Philip Horne, Peter Swaab and Michael Brooke.

Product Details

RRP: £19.99 / cat. no. BFIB1168 / Cert PG
UK / 1940 / black and white / English language, with optional hard-of-hearing subtitles / 85 mins / Original aspect ratio 1.33:1
Disc 1: BD50 / 1080p / 24fps / PCM mono audio (48K/24-bit)
Disc 2: DVD9 / PAL / Dolby Digital audio (320 kbps)

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What A Disgrace
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#18 Post by What A Disgrace » Tue Nov 26, 2013 6:03 pm

The logo on the back of the package does seem to indicate that this is a Warner Bros. license, indeed. I'm hoping that further British classics (Performance and Blow Up, please!) will join this film and The Devils.

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manicsounds
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#19 Post by manicsounds » Wed Nov 27, 2013 9:12 pm


Werewolf by Night

Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#20 Post by Werewolf by Night » Thu Jul 24, 2014 11:52 am

This is currently £11.00 on Amazon UK (45% off), the lowest it's ever been there.

boywonder
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#21 Post by boywonder » Sat Jul 26, 2014 10:45 pm

Amazon.uk says region B. Any chance they are wrong and this is an all region blu?

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chatterjees
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#22 Post by chatterjees » Sun Jul 27, 2014 12:06 am

It did not play in my Sony US player, I used my region free player to watch it. So, I would say it is Region B for sure.

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MichaelB
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#23 Post by MichaelB » Sun Jul 27, 2014 2:24 am

It's 100% definitely Region B - major studio licenses always are.

The BFI doesn't mess around with that kind of thing because their entire business model revolves around maintaining ongoing good relationships with major rightsholders (since they don't own the rights to the overwhelming majority of films in the archive, just the physical copies). So if Warner Bros - or whoever - demands Region B, that's what they get.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#24 Post by hearthesilence » Sun May 02, 2021 7:08 pm

I didn't know about this film until Jim Hoberman wrote about Gaslight in general back in August 2019 for the NY Times. I forgot about it before looking into it further, and after splurging on the last WBShop's Warner Archive sale, I was surprised to find it as an extra on the Gaslight (1944) BD...but in SD. I hadn't seen Cukor's version in years, so I went the extra mile of streaming an HD version of Dickinson's film before re-visiting Cukor's film, and it's a wonderful surprise. I think Dickinson's version is certainly the better film, but Cukor's is still good and thankfully it goes at the material with a different approach - to be fair, it may have been done for commercial reasons rather than artistic ones (they were already suppressing Dickinson's version, which is just fucking WRONG, and above all casting Ingrid Bergman probably meant re-arranging the film to make it more of a star vehicle for her), but by shifting the center on to Paula rather than "Gregory," you have a substantially different work, one that seems much less redundant after watching Dickinson's version. (I would even recommend watching Dickinson's version first, then Cukor's.) I'm glad the BFI put out this BD and moreso that it's still in-print. I've never seen any of Dickinson's work before - I'll have to pick this up the next time I place a bulk order of UK discs.

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swo17
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Re: Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)

#25 Post by swo17 » Sun May 02, 2021 7:46 pm

Queen of Spades and Secret People are worth your time if you'd like to explore more Dickinson

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