Why the suspense movie that gave rise to the words “Gaslight” and “gaslighting” became a masterpiece

Movies about gaslighting

The fear of a woman who begins to doubt herself and is psychologically cornered by the words and actions of someone close to her. The master of suspense, Hitchcock, rather than Cukor, often incorporated this theme into his works. The most famous is `` Rebecca '' (40), which depicts a woman who is frightened by the shadow of her husband's deceased ex-wife, Rebecca. Here, Mrs. Danvers, who was not her husband's servant but her ex-wife's servant, psychologically abuses the heroine. In addition, although it is different from a melodrama like ``Rebecca'', in `` The Lady Vanishes '' (38), the main character is made to believe that his memories are wrong by the people around him, and he is told `` Dial M for Murder'' ' (54), an unsuspecting wife is framed as a murderer by her husband's trick.

"Rebecca" preview

There are many other interesting works by Hitchcock that deal with the subject of gaslighting. In The House of Sleep (48, directed by Douglas Sirk), a wife who begins to suffer from sleepwalking falls into despair, believing that she is suffering from a mental illness that disrupts her memories. go. However, behind the scenes, her supposedly kind husband is manipulating her using drugs and hypnosis. Another example of a story about a man who uses hypnosis to manipulate women is `` Circle of Suspicion '' (49, directed by Otto Preminger).

Recently, gaslighting by a husband towards his wife was used as the key to solving a mystery in The Girl on the Train (16: directed by Tate Taylor). Emily Blunt plays a woman suffering from alcoholism, and as she searches for the truth behind a certain case, she begins to realize the abuse she was once subjected to. ` `What Lies Beneath '' (2000: directed by Robert Zemeckis), in which Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford play the roles of a married couple, can be said to be an application of this theme. In other cases, as in the famous `` Rosemary's Baby '' (68, directed by Roman Polanski), even the audience is fooled into thinking that the protagonist is possessed by an impossible delusion. `` The Invisible Man '' (20: directed by Leigh Whannell) is a suspense drama that is a variation on this format.

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