Eighty years before Isabella Rossellini landed her first Academy Award nomination, her mother won her first Oscar. Ingrid Bergman was named best actress for her turn in Gaslight, George Cukor’s 1944 feature centering on a woman whose husband suggests that she is losing her sanity after they move into the London home where her aunt was murdered a decade earlier. The film also starred Angela Lansbury in her Oscar-nominated feature debut.
THR noted in June 1943 that Bergman, who had appeared in Casablanca the year prior, had been cast in Gaslight, Cukor’s first project since his World War II stint in the Army (earlier, he had directed such classics as 1940’s The Philadelphia Story). MGM released Gaslight in May 1944 to box office success and critical acclaim. It collected $4.6 million ($83 million today), and THR‘s review praised the “extraordinary” film as “the job for which Cukor admirers have been waiting.” It was nominated for seven Oscars and won two. The 1945 ceremony, a subdued affair in the shadow of war, was the first to be broadcast nationally on the radio; this year’s Oscars, amid the aftermath of the L.A. wildfires, will be the first to stream live.
Gaslight, selected by the AFI in 2001 as one of the 100 most thrilling movies ever, continues to resonate: “gaslighting” has become part of the lexicon, referring to mental manipulation that makes one question one’s reality. Rossellini, who is up for best supporting actress for Conclave, said of Gaslight in 2021: “The film deals with a subject still very present in today’s social debate: female abuse, in particular psychological abuse.”
This story appeared in the Feb. 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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