Based on personal experience, many of us might answer the question, "Can your spouse drive you nuts?", with an unequivocal YES, but this story is a little different than what our everyday experiences might be. Here, the husband (Charles Boyer), with the complicity of a nasty bitchy maid (Angela Lansbury, her debut), deliberately tries to arrange events in his gas-lighted Victorian house, so that his weak-willed wife (Ingrid Berman) will believe that she's losing her mind -- again.
Boyer commits minor acts of deception. He hides objects, moves portraits, claims he had nothing to do with it, that Bergman is going nuts and not remembering her own irrational behavior. The object? Boyer is trying to locate some extremely expensive jewelry that Bergman inherited. Neither of them knows where it is, but Boyer is convinced they're locked securely away somewhere in an overstuffed attic. In order to search the attic he leaves the house and reenters it by a secret passage from another street. Then he lights the gas in the attic and pokes through the chests and armoirs and other doo-dads, looking for the jewels. Now, gas light is not like electricity. There's only so much of it being pumped into a house, so when you light an extra outlet or two, as Boyer does in the attic, the flames in the rest of the house are lowered noticeably. Gas has other disadvantages. It explodes sometimes and it can smother you. You know who was at pains to point out these dangers? The whale oil lobby, that's who! (I just threw that in and, though it's true, you may ignore it except as evidence that plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.) Back to the movie. Yes. Bergman wanders around the house, half stoned from anxiety, watching the gas light go up and down, while no one else notices it, hearing boards creak and drawers roll shut in the attic where no one can possibly be. She becomes dreamier and is convinced that she's going bonkers again.
Enter Joseph Cotten who clears things up in a jiffy. Like Poe's purloined letter, the jewels were hidden in plain sight. The bad folks are whisked away and Bergman is freed of a husband with a baritone French accent but a malevolent character.
Could Boyer really have driven her clinically insane? Probably not, though he might have convinced her that she was going round the bend. Those are two different things. Oh, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that she'd be scared out of her wits, but not gravely disabled. For that you'd be better off bringing an organismic vulnerability to the situation, a genetic component. And the stress would have to be vastly greater than discovering hidden objects and hearing boards creak. Otherwise, as soon as the hiding and the creaking stopped, Bergman's belief in her own insanity would probably fade soon enough.
George Cukor has staged the movie and executed it well. I vaguely remember seeing it as a kid and it scared the heck out of me. Except for the psychology, it's almost one of those spooky, haunted old mansion movies. A good movie for the whole family on a Friday night. Watch it with the kids. And every once in a while, during a particularly frightening moment, shout into their ears and tickle their ribs and watch what happens.
Boyer commits minor acts of deception. He hides objects, moves portraits, claims he had nothing to do with it, that Bergman is going nuts and not remembering her own irrational behavior. The object? Boyer is trying to locate some extremely expensive jewelry that Bergman inherited. Neither of them knows where it is, but Boyer is convinced they're locked securely away somewhere in an overstuffed attic. In order to search the attic he leaves the house and reenters it by a secret passage from another street. Then he lights the gas in the attic and pokes through the chests and armoirs and other doo-dads, looking for the jewels. Now, gas light is not like electricity. There's only so much of it being pumped into a house, so when you light an extra outlet or two, as Boyer does in the attic, the flames in the rest of the house are lowered noticeably. Gas has other disadvantages. It explodes sometimes and it can smother you. You know who was at pains to point out these dangers? The whale oil lobby, that's who! (I just threw that in and, though it's true, you may ignore it except as evidence that plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.) Back to the movie. Yes. Bergman wanders around the house, half stoned from anxiety, watching the gas light go up and down, while no one else notices it, hearing boards creak and drawers roll shut in the attic where no one can possibly be. She becomes dreamier and is convinced that she's going bonkers again.
Enter Joseph Cotten who clears things up in a jiffy. Like Poe's purloined letter, the jewels were hidden in plain sight. The bad folks are whisked away and Bergman is freed of a husband with a baritone French accent but a malevolent character.
Could Boyer really have driven her clinically insane? Probably not, though he might have convinced her that she was going round the bend. Those are two different things. Oh, it's perfectly reasonable to expect that she'd be scared out of her wits, but not gravely disabled. For that you'd be better off bringing an organismic vulnerability to the situation, a genetic component. And the stress would have to be vastly greater than discovering hidden objects and hearing boards creak. Otherwise, as soon as the hiding and the creaking stopped, Bergman's belief in her own insanity would probably fade soon enough.
George Cukor has staged the movie and executed it well. I vaguely remember seeing it as a kid and it scared the heck out of me. Except for the psychology, it's almost one of those spooky, haunted old mansion movies. A good movie for the whole family on a Friday night. Watch it with the kids. And every once in a while, during a particularly frightening moment, shout into their ears and tickle their ribs and watch what happens.