Word: gaslighted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hold of me" as the spirits rose up to drink blood. Every ethnic group has spun folktales of the ungrateful dead. Even so, horror did not become a literary convention until the late 18th century, when the gothic novel described the exotic terrors of old feudal keeps. In the gaslight era, the supernatural took hold of the public imagination, and British authors quickly dominated the field. Their very names suggest creaking Victorian stairways, forbidden rooms and disembodied spirits: Montague Rhodes James, J.S. Le Fanu, Eden Phillpotts, Algernon Blackwood. In the U.S., an alcoholic and sickly journalist led readers down dark...
After seeing modern movies edited so tightly that scenes change before the actors even finish their lines, and the protagonists' characters developed to the sophistication of early Mickey Mouse cartoons, it is sometimes disorienting to see movies like 1944's GASLIGHT (Harvard's Carpenter Center, Sunday). Gaslight is all mood and atmosphere, as scenes unfold slowly and tension builds so unhurriedly that you're squirming by the beginning of hour...
...Gaslight comes complete with an Academy Award-winning performance by Ingrid Bergman, a wonderfully oily turn by Charles Boyer, and Angela Lansbury as a teenager in an early role. Bergman is haunting as a naive young maid who is duped by primo sleazebag Boyer, who wants to steal her family jewels. The ending is so trite and stylized that one half expects a knight in shining armor to stride up the stairs of Bergman's London townhouse. But this is mere Kabuki '40s style, so just lap up Bergman, who hits some real highs during her (and our) two-hour...
...Mystery of Irma Vep is a lush and loving parody of every gaslight romance from Jane Eyre to Rebecca, with glancing references to Shakespeare and Poe, to Louis Feuillade's silent-movie serials and Universal horror shows of the'30s-not to forget a side trip to the pyramids, where Lord Edgar reveals himself as an Egyptologist with a mummy fixation...
DIED. Bronislau Kaper, 81, Polish-born composer of scores for such MGM films as San Francisco, Gaslight, both versions of Mutiny on the Bounty (with Clark Gable in 1935 and Marlon Brando in 1962) and Lili, for which he won an Oscar in 1953; of cancer; in Beverly Hills...