Few films can boast the privilege, or perhaps the curse, of having their title engraved in the lexicon of the collective psyche. Gaslight, which in Italy took on the more melodramatic but no less effective title of Gaslight (Anguish), is not simply a film; it is the codification of a concept, the diagnosis of an abuse so subtle and pervasive that it requires a neologism to be grasped. The act of “gaslighting,” or psychological manipulation aimed at making a victim doubt their own sanity, is now a commonly used term, but its cinematic genesis, orchestrated with surgical precision by George Cukor in 1944, remains a dizzying masterpiece of chamber horror.

The film creeps up on the viewer with the same insidious slowness with which its antagonist, Gregory Anton (a mellifluous and terrifying Charles Boyer in his controlled cruelty), creeps into the mind of his prey. Paula Alquist, played by Ingrid Bergman, who delivers one of the most iconic and heartbreaking performances of her career here, is not a passive victim, but a brilliant and vibrant mind that is systematically, methodically dismantled. The greatness of the film lies precisely in this process. We do not witness an explosion of violence, but a slow, steady erosion of reality, a dripping of doubts that poisons perception. A lost object, an inexplicable noise, a casual remark that sows the seeds of paranoia: Cukor, a master at directing actresses and probing female psychology, transforms these minor domestic incidents into weapons of psychological mass destruction.

The Victorian London of the film is not merely a decorative backdrop, but a gothic labyrinth that serves as a sounding board for Paula's anguish. Number 9 Thornton Square is a character in its own right, a suffocating mausoleum laden with repressed memories and oppressive luxury. The interiors, laden with heavy curtains, objects that seem to observe, and mirrors that reflect an increasingly distorted image of the protagonist, evoke the claustrophobic atmospheres of Edgar Allan Poe. The house, like the Usher residence, is a physical extension of the disintegrating psyche of its inhabitants. Every shadow cast by the gas lights that give the film its title seems to dance to the rhythm of Paula's insecurities, becoming the perfect visual metaphor for the fog that descends on her mind. Cukor's direction traps Bergman, and with her, the viewer, in shots that emphasize her loneliness and vulnerability, often isolating her in a corner of the composition, crushed by the imposing furnishings and Boyer's predatory presence.

The most immediate parallel is with Gothic literature à la Brontë or Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (brought to the screen by Hitchcock just four years earlier), where a young heroine finds herself imprisoned in an imposing mansion, haunted by the past and manipulated by an enigmatic male figure. But Cukor goes further. Whereas in Rebecca the threat is spectral and psychological but linked to an absent figure (the first wife), in Gaslight the monster is present, charming, and sleeps in the same bed as his victim. Gregory Anton is not a tormented Mr. Rochester; he is a calculating predator, a proto-sociopath whose weapon is not brute force but seduction and words. His violence is linguistic, his cruelty intellectual. Charles Boyer, with his continental accent and impeccable manners, creates an archetype of the modern villain, whose wickedness is all the more frightening because it is cloaked in thoughtfulness and rationality.

In this theater of psychological cruelty, every secondary character becomes a pawn in Gregory's game. Even the very young Angela Lansbury, in her dazzling debut, plays a maid, Nancy, whose brazen insolence is not simple insubordination but a further tool of destabilization, a constant reminder to Paula of her supposed inadequacy and madness. Joseph Cotten, in the role of Scotland Yard inspector Brian Cameron, represents the anchor to reality, logic, and empirical observation that oppose Gregory's distorted narrative. His investigation is not only the resolution of an old crime, but a veritable epistemological struggle for the restoration of objective truth.

It is almost impossible not to read Gaslight, produced in the midst of World War II, in a broader, almost meta-textual key. The film is a powerful allegory about the power of propaganda and the manipulation of the masses. Gregory's operation on Paula is a microcosm of how a malevolent authority can convince an entire population to doubt their own eyes, to believe a lie repeated endlessly until it becomes the truth. At a time when entire nations were subjugated by totalitarian narratives that rewrote history and reality itself, the intimate drama of a woman trapped in a London house took on a universal and terribly topical resonance. Paula's struggle to cling to her own perception against a systematic assault on her sanity is the struggle of the individual against the power that seeks to destroy her critical consciousness.

A productive anecdote sheds an almost ironic light on the very nature of the film. There was an earlier British version, from 1940, directed by Thorold Dickinson. MGM, after acquiring the rights to the remake, systematically attempted to make every copy of the original film disappear, trying to destroy the negatives. They wanted Cukor's version to become the only version, the only reality perceived by the public. In an incredible meta-cinematic short circuit, the studio was, in fact, “gaslighting” the history of cinema, attempting to erase a previous work in order to impose its own as the absolute truth. Fortunately, the British version survived, but the episode remains a disturbing testimony to how the mechanisms described in the film can operate on any scale.

The final climax, in which Paula, finally aware and liberated, reverses the power dynamic on her tormentor, is almost physically cathartic. Her words, spoken with icy calm as she pretends not to find the knife to free him, are not just revenge, but the reappropriation of her own intellect and reality. “If you weren't careful, you might imagine that things really happen,” she tells him, returning his own poisonous logic to the sender. It is the triumph of the individual mind over psychological tyranny.

Gaslight remains a seminal work not only as a flawless psychological thriller, but as a cultural document that gave a name to an invisible form of abuse. It is a film whose tension stems not from what you see, but from what you doubt you have seen. Its legacy is not confined to film libraries, but lives on in the language we use to describe the darkest manipulations of the human mind, testifying to how, at times, cinema does not merely reflect reality, but provides us with the very tools to understand it.