Gaslight

I've reviewed Gaslightⁱ, an ancient film every libertard referencesⁱⁱ without having ever seen. But hey, ersatz culture, using the names of things is hard enough, who can be bothered to interact with any things at all after all that hard work of sorting and applying labels! Meta should be enough for anyone.

The salient points for the contemporaneous mind would be, I imagine, that...

• the man is exactly what "American" has come to mean these days, an uppity weasel, stubborn but petty, bereft of anything even vaguely resembling perspective and trying to make up for that lack by churning through a "legal system" of sorts composed of three ring binders nobody could possibly be bothered to read.
• the woman breaks out in tears at a charity concert and this is not socially acceptable.
• the maid is made of stronger stuff than her supposed mistress. You have, of course, absolutely no idea how common this historically was.ⁱⁱⁱ

See, I even made a list. What could be more convenient! I revolutionized film review, one could say, with this first, best and biggest review ever.

Anyway, Diana Wynyard's insane gaze is quite accomplished, and besides as you all know all evil goes together. Theft, murder, bigamy, being annoying... that part's not changed any.

Still, I'd suggest you watch this rather than the other one. Why be different just like everyone else, you know ?

1. 1944, by Thorold Dickinson, with Anton Walbrook (who does a very fine hissing, mustachioed villain) and Diana Wynyard. Speaking of Mr. Adolf Wohlbruck : he was an Austrian, did you know that ? [↩]
2. Yes, yes, there's also the 1944 Cukor version. Spare me. [↩]
3. This goes to an important, large and quite deliberately avoided discussion of the actual functioning of certain historical arrangements, the implications of that actual functioning and so forth. But to make the long story short : the only people who owe reparations for black slavery ARE THE UNREASONABLY WELL TO DO BLACK PEOPLE LIVING IN THE US TODAY. Their current wealth -- in stark contrast to the means of their cousins left behind, those subhuman wretches today befouling the Congo valley -- is, perhaps, in part due to their own ability and dilligence. It is also, and indisputably, due to some white people bothering with their antecessors, at the time as inept and as useless as any african ever was. If anything is to be revised, then those kind, selfless efforts are deserving of better reward. [↩]