Gaslight

Nothing like as lavish as the later MGM version with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, but in its own small-scale way a superior film by far.

I can't say I enjoyed such a downbeat film as much as I respected it.

The first, British version of Patrick Hamilton's popular play, is extremely well acted by Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook, but Cukor's MGM version, with Osar-winning Ingrid Bergman, is superior.

So much goes right in this film version, all without sparking a corresponding bump in my enthusiasm, that it's all the more obvious that I find some foundations of this text perennially problematic.