Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944)

Most people don't watch classic black and white movies. If they do, it's likely they have only watched It's a Wonderful Life, or films by Alfred Hitchcock, or a handful of other films. How has Hitchcock's movies penetrated the consciousness of modern filmgoers where all others have failed? Certainly, he makes fantastic movies, but he's not the only one.

He is certainly the master of suspense, but has he created a movie with such a powerful psychological message, that the title of the film was subsequently turned into a verb and used in the field of psychology?

George Cukor has. He's not a famous director. Best known for the light-hearted comedies My Fair Lady or perhaps The Philadelphia Story, with Gaslight Cukor has created a masterpiece that is every bit the equal, if not greater, than Hitchcock's best work, a decade before Hitchcock directed his most acclaimed works.

To be fair, Hitchcock had already released Rebecca four years prior, which has a similar tone and narrative themes, although he took them from a novel. To be even fairer, Cukor's film is a remake of a British film which is itself an adaptation of a play written by Patrick Hamilton. Thanks, Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia also concedes that Cukor's film is the origin of the academic term.

For those who don't know, the definition of gaslighting.

A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity.

The actions of the villain Gregory Bauer (Charles Boyer) are the quintessential example of gaslighting. The manner in which he psychologically wears down Paula Anton (Ingrid Bergman) is as genius as it is cruel. If Bauer was more well-known, he would undoubtedly rank extremely high in the villains list. Every scene featuring Gregory and Paula is difficult to watch - we know with carefully chosen words he will manipulate Anton into doubting her own mind more and more. There are a couple of moments where Paula fights back. As much as she is being meticulously manipulated, she is not an unintelligent lady. There are a couple of moments where she fights back, like the babyface throwing a few punches after being beaten down for five minutes. Bauer is taken aback at this, but he is able to regroup and with more fiendish mindgames, wears her back down into submission.

It really is a masterful script, the dialogue and narrative structure are perfect. There are a few other characters involved, and it boils down to a thrilling climax, but I will spare the details. I will say that it doesn't go down the road of Hollywood bombast as it did in Hitchock movies such as North By Northwest or Vertigo, it correctly stays within its slow psychological trapping, alá Psycho or Rear Window.



Thus far I have failed to mention the acting. Without competent acting the entire concept of Gaslight would collapse like a house of cards exposed to a breeze. Fortunately, Bergman and Boyer are more than up to the task. They are perfect in their roles. Boyer is a ruthless, cold, calculating villain. He has a particular glare that forces poor Paula Anton to accept whatever untruths he feeds her. Bergman is flawless as the woman losing her mind. We also see Angela Lansbury and Joseph Cotten in supporting roles, who also do their jobs excellently.

Perfect suspense thriller that comfortably sits inside my Top 50.

Nightmare Alley:

Had me absolutely hooked start to finish, the constant smoking in movies set in this era is always distracting albeit accurate but otherwise I loved it. I’m glad they didn’t spell things out immediately and left it later in the film to explain it people that may not be following:

I’m normally a hard R when it comes to

SPOILER: Click to show

Guessing the endings of movies but I predicted this accurately and was glad I did as it definitely worked

Watched Tick Tick Boom. Amazing adaptation. Garfield with another great performance and just a great film from Lin-Manuel Miranda with a real fierce directing debut. Curious if he will keep adopting classic musicals for Hollywood. Dozens of great musicals he can adapt.

Tonight rewatched Talk Radio. Such a damn good movie. Eric Bogosian essentially does a one man show here and penned the script himself. Funny how this is supposed to be about a firebrand asshole radio host that people love to hate, but compared to the real right wing radiohosts of today he is tame by comparison.

One of Oliver Stone's mid-career films that I never knew about until I got the old Oliver Stone DVD collection. Very easy for this film to go unseen, but a very fun film. The callers are pretty fun too. A mix of crazies, haters and psychopaths. Rounding out the cast are Alec Baldwin, Ellen Greene, and Leslie Hope all in some of their early roles.

Scream (5):

The second best scream film, best since original not that 3-4 were anything to write home about.

Scream 5 - I loved it.

Nightmare Alley - fantastic film. Brilliant cinematography and storytelling. Depressing ending, but the way they foreshadowed it was incredible and he deserves it tbh. Can not praise this film enough, though the run time could’ve been shortened a little.

Nightmare Alley is a fantastic period piece. I am huge into the history of magic and this film takes place during the golden era of magic when it was in the realms of carnivals and con-artists.  Also huge early history of psychology fan, so this is the perfect intersection of my interests, psychoanalysis ala Anna Freud mets magic con man with a focus on cold reading.

Jackass is a part of the cultural zeitgeist that I never had much interest in watching despite everyone hyping it in high school but figured I’d check this one out as I liked Bad Grandpa and the non stop marketing for it worked on me. sandylea told me I probably wouldn’t like it so I watched

Jackass Number Two:
Last night to prepare as the first one isn’t on any streaming platforms here. Enjoy the stunts and most of the dumb pranks except when it’s just bathroom stuff and gross.

Jackass Forever:
Again 85% just complete stupidity and the most I’ve laughed in a cinema in ages then you have the 15% of stuff that is just disgusting. Just goes to show how simple humans are when this is the most I’ve heard a cinema crowd laugh in quite awhile and it’s mostly people getting hit in the nuts and falling over.

Can they release the Sanitiser Cut where it cuts out close ups of shit and other stuff like that and I’d be more inclined to watch the rest of them?



Also one year my brother who was probably 10 at the time was given a wrestling figure as a present and myself a Jackass DVD, I asked him to swap as I wanted the figurine and figured he’d like the stunts etc
(As I said I’d never watched it)

Needlessly to say my mother was not impressed I gave him said DVD and I got in trouble 😂

:lol:

Was Nightmare Alley as good as I think it was, or did I just pause it at the perfect moment and then resumed it high

I loved it. It was really good.  Very accurate for carny scams and cold reading.  As someone who learned traditional cold reading for magic and psych based cold reading for therapeutic use it was like the perfect movie for me as they showed the great intersection between the two systems.  I am a sucker for long con films too.

Feb 5, 2022 3:21:25 GMT 🤯 said:

Was Nightmare Alley as good as I think it was, or did I just pause it at the perfect moment and then resumed it high

No, it was definitely this good.

Need to rewatch in whole when sober

But highly likely Favorite 100 Films

Highly

Like ahead of The Prestige and even The Sting (UT/Lionheart)

High

Feb 5, 2022 3:52:35 GMT c said:

I loved it. It was really good.  Very accurate for carny scams and cold reading.  As someone who learned traditional cold reading for magic and psych based cold reading for therapeutic use it was like the perfect movie for me as they showed the great intersection between the two systems.  I am a sucker for long con films too.

It was definitely the long con

Yeah above Prestige for me too, just barely. It was just a masterpiece of a film.

Jackass Forever

I loved it! Haven’t laughed so hard in forever at the cinemas.
I grew up watching Jackass and Viva La Bam, and even Bam’s Unholy union. The occasional episode every now and then of the others too.

I loved the original trilogy of movies, even when they have been pretty fucked up with some stunts (there is some that make me gag, I’m sure it’s normal 😂). Just really enjoyed this, it was great seeing the OG crew, though of course I missed Ryan and Bam. The tribute to Ryan at the end was really touching, and it’s obvious the guys never stopped loving him. It was sad that Bam was absent, but honestly it sounds like it was for his own good, I really hope he is able to recover and get the help he needs/turn his life around - I mean look at Steve-O I was convinced for years if anyone was going to die from a stunt gone wrong or an overdose it was going to be him.

Really happy I was wrong, and I really hope we see Bam with the guys again someday.

Was surprised at how many newbies were introduced but I honestly enjoyed all of them. Poopies cracked me up the most, especially with the trivia skit. And as always love the celebration cameos. Eric Andre was great - he loves pulling pranks so it’s nice to see him get some back.

Overall, really loved it, and it’s easily one of the best.
Super super glad that no one died. Johnny suffered pretty nasty injuries but thankfully nothing life threatening. Also he is still looking like a major snack 😍 and even Chris was looking better than ever, and of course always naked 😂😂

I went and saw the new Scream last night, unsurprisingly I enjoyed the latest installment in my favorite horror/slasher series. I also recently watched both Hotel Transylvania: Transformania, as well as Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild with the kids. Honestly, they were decent enough family movies, with Hotel Transylvania being the better of the two.

2022 Movie Rankings

SPOILER: Click to show

3. Ice Age: Adventures of Buck Wild
2. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
1. Scream

Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro, 2021)

Credit to PW for this one. My plans for today fell through, so upon reading the posts in this thread about this movie, I checked out the cinema times, and decided to go and see it. Definitely did not regret. Great experience.

A savage drinking game would be to take a shot every time Bradley Cooper lights up a cigarette. It honestly got distracting, I started paying attention to his cigarettes more than the script. Fortunately he doesn't do it in the second act, but if you're playing along you'd be so bladdered by that point you wouldn't even remember the glitz and glam chapter.

Besides that, great concept which ended perfectly. I didn't guess the ending but it wasn't one of those plots where I try to guess the ending, I just sit back and see where events go. Really like the plots: the events unfolded as a logical consequence of the personalities involved, nothing else.

Part of me feels the first act went on too long for what was essentially scene setting. To be fair there was never a dull moment, and all the acts were very interesting, but I was always asking myself what the point of all this way? Well I found out eventually. Love the way they display cold reading and all the typical mind reader tricks. Thought the narrative wasn't always completely clear, and some parts confused me.

SPOILER: Click to show

For example the first therapy session where Cate Blanchett establishes that Bradley Cooper has alcohol issues and/or some vague daddy issues. I thought they were going to go somewhere big with that. Cooper starts randomly drinking later in the film, that's about it. So what was the point of that scene? Maybe to establish how easy it was for Cate Blanchett to get inside his head? Show the audience that he's an even bigger mark then the people he calls marks? Now that I've explained it to myself, that sounds pretty plausible.

Don't get why Cooper murdered the old carny guy by giving him the poison alcohol, or what his real daddy issues were. Yeah there is that reveal at the end of the film, but all he did was say that he hates him and then lets him die in a pretty cold way. Why does he hate him? How long was he with his father in that hut before he decided to do that? Why were they in that hut in the first place? That reveal asks more questions than it answers, and what relevance does it have to the plot as a whole?

Also didn't like the introduction so much. Cooper's character strolls into this carnival, doesn't say a word, nobody knows what he's about, but everyone in the carnival is magically drawn to him and he gets work. Not just grunt work, but they're letting him in on their carny secrets very quickly. All that for a man who barely speaks.

Gives a whole new meaning to the word geek.

Feb 5, 2022 17:08:28 GMT Emperor said:

Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro, 2021)

Credit to PW for this one. My plans for today fell through, so upon reading the posts in this thread about this movie, I checked out the cinema times, and decided to go and see it. Definitely did not regret. Great experience.

A savage drinking game would be to take a shot every time Bradley Cooper lights up a cigarette. It honestly got distracting, I started paying attention to his cigarettes more than the script. Fortunately he doesn't do it in the second act, but if you're playing along you'd be so bladdered by that point you wouldn't even remember the glitz and glam chapter.

Besides that, great concept which ended perfectly. I didn't guess the ending but it wasn't one of those plots where I try to guess the ending, I just sit back and see where events go. Really like the plots: the events unfolded as a logical consequence of the personalities involved, nothing else.

Part of me feels the first act went on too long for what was essentially scene setting. To be fair there was never a dull moment, and all the acts were very interesting, but I was always asking myself what the point of all this way? Well I found out eventually. Love the way they display cold reading and all the typical mind reader tricks. Thought the narrative wasn't always completely clear, and some parts confused me.

SPOILER: Click to show

For example the first therapy session where Cate Blanchett establishes that Bradley Cooper has alcohol issues and/or some vague daddy issues. I thought they were going to go somewhere big with that. Cooper starts randomly drinking later in the film, that's about it. So what was the point of that scene? Maybe to establish how easy it was for Cate Blanchett to get inside his head? Show the audience that he's an even bigger mark then the people he calls marks? Now that I've explained it to myself, that sounds pretty plausible.

Don't get why Cooper murdered the old carny guy by giving him the poison alcohol, or what his real daddy issues were. Yeah there is that reveal at the end of the film, but all he did was say that he hates him and then lets him die in a pretty cold way. Why does he hate him? How long was he with his father in that hut before he decided to do that? Why were they in that hut in the first place? That reveal asks more questions than it answers, and what relevance does it have to the plot as a whole?

Also didn't like the introduction so much. Cooper's character strolls into this carnival, doesn't say a word, nobody knows what he's about, but everyone in the carnival is magically drawn to him and he gets work. Not just grunt work, but they're letting him in on their carny secrets very quickly. All that for a man who barely speaks.

Gives a whole new meaning to the word geek.

Dr. Emperor with a sly dad joke again! Also, I think it actually restores the OG definition of "geek" vs. give it new meaning.

I want to re-watch Nightmare Alley again so bad. I think the slow, long first act (including not talking for over 11 minutes) was very intentional. If you graphed the pace and increasing tension through the movie, I think it would be a very intentionally designed exponential curve. I also think this might've been very much intended to be dreamlike with a sense of a time loop too.

For people who liked it, def look into watching the original. Not many realize this is a remake of the noir classic of the same name.

Replies with spoilers below:

SPOILER: Click to show

Del Toro decided to cut out the last scene, which was Stanton reconnecting with Molly, setting them on the path to become just like Zeena and Pete.

Stanton got easy access to the carnival by being a confidence man.  He was a con artist through and through with a knack for cold reading.  The two skills are the keys to mentalists who do the same shit in the real world.  But moreso once he takes the job as a carny he is no longer an outsider.  To this day these groups are super secretive to outsiders but show you have some knowledge and they openly embrace you.  Until I learned to do a pass (hidden cut of a deck of cards, used to reverse the cut people make when gambling) for instance the magicians in my area would not share shit with me because I was just an outsider interested in magic.  Once I could do a legit card sharp move, the local guild people no longer saw me as an outsider and were super friendly and taught me a lot.  Not sure why we use the pass here as the gate to figure out to open.  Or maybe they were just fucking with me.  Who knows with carny people.

That first therapy session likely foreshadowed the cut ending, where Stanton ends the film slipping into the old carney role of Pete, who he replaced, destined to become a violent woman abusing alcoholic himself now his confidence was shattered.  It also shows how easily Ritter can manipulate him, setting up her reveal that she was conning Stanton the entire time.

Feb 5, 2022 4:00:11 GMT 🤯 said:

Feb 5, 2022 3:21:25 GMT 🤯 said:

Was Nightmare Alley as good as I think it was, or did I just pause it at the perfect moment and then resumed it high

No, it was definitely this good.

Need to rewatch in whole when sober

But highly likely Favorite 100 Films

Highly

Like ahead of The Prestige and even The Sting (UT /Lionheart )

High

Was a great watch, I couldn't personally put it near the Prestige or the Sting though, mainly because I guessed the ending pretty much immediately. There was some good conning in here, but those movies were two of the purest cons put to film, Prestige a couple times over. The therapist stuff felt like it added nothing and went close to nowhere, could have probably cut a good half hour and streamlined it a bit. Solid movie all around, not quite as enamored as others were.

If we are talking con movies, the film to beat really should be The Brother's Bloom. Such a good con film. I know hating on Rian Johnson is vogue now, but when he hits, he is untouchable.  "The perfect con is one where everyone involved gets just the thing they wanted," is just pure beauty.  

I suspect the studio changed the ending cutting the final scene as people did not get what it meant for Stanton and Molly to start to connect again or those that did disliked how dark it made the film. Was always a controversial scene in the original.

Cutting it last minute made all of the shit they put into the film to show Staton and Molly following in Zeele and Pete's steps go without resolution.

Moonfall is as awesome as the trailers made it look. By the book disaster film that does not try to be anything more than it is. All the stereotypes and plot hooks you expect in these films are there. So much fun.

Moonfall: Had I known Roland Emmerich directed this I would have known what to expect.

It’s a dumb sci-fi film ripped seemingly straight out of the 90s, acting isn’t great (especially Halle Berry’s ex-husband in the film) with a sun plot I couldn’t care less about but overall a fun experience with a cool concept even if it is packed with exposition.

Revisited Reality Bytes. There is no movie that better captures life and attitudes in suburbia in the 90's than this film. Reminds me so much of my old friend group.

Without Remorse: Solid revenge/espionage flick, completely by the numbers, but good performances and decent action. Not a must watch or reinventing the wheel, but exactly what you're looking for in the type of movie.

Encanto: Don't quite get the buzz for "We Don't Talk About Bruno," which was solid, but not even the best song in the movie...either way. Really entertaining flick, nice songs, good cast of characters. Not amongst the best, I say Mitchel's vs the Machines was a better animated flick, but it was a step above Luca.

Forced Wife to watch I'm Thinking of Ending Things because of her surprisingly positive reaction to rewatching Eternal Sunshine recently and then being too high to not realize Nightmare Alley wasn't as meta slipstream surreal as I thought.

For me, it was cool getting to rewatch Ending Things a second time and pick up on a lot more this time knowing what was happening and how it would end.

But Wife HATED it. So much so I'm essentially banned from picking what goes on the television screen until after our next anniversary. If we make it that far. Thanks, Charlie Kaufman.

Feb 9, 2022 12:55:12 GMT 🤯 said:

Forced Wife to watch I'm Thinking of Ending Things because of her surprisingly positive reaction to rewatching Eternal Sunshine recently and then being too high to not realize Nightmare Alley wasn't as meta slipstream surreal as I thought.

For me, it was cool getting to rewatch Ending Things a second time and pick up on a lot more this time knowing what was happening and how it would end.

But Wife HATED it. So much so I'm essentially banned from picking what goes on the television screen until after our next anniversary. If we make it that far. Thanks, Charlie Kaufman.

What did she hate about it other than being a soul destroying movie?

Would she be open to Adaptation? -_- Tell her the Good Doctor perscribed it.

Or maybe you can finally show her Ted Lasso? Tell her to be curious, not judgemental.

Feb 9, 2022 13:03:17 GMT Big Pete said:

Feb 9, 2022 12:55:12 GMT 🤯 said:

Forced Wife to watch I'm Thinking of Ending Things because of her surprisingly positive reaction to rewatching Eternal Sunshine recently and then being too high to not realize Nightmare Alley wasn't as meta slipstream surreal as I thought.

For me, it was cool getting to rewatch Ending Things a second time and pick up on a lot more this time knowing what was happening and how it would end.

But Wife HATED it. So much so I'm essentially banned from picking what goes on the television screen until after our next anniversary. If we make it that far. Thanks, Charlie Kaufman.

What did she hate about it other than being a soul destroying movie?

Would she be open to Adaptation? -_- Tell her the Good Doctor perscribed it.

Or maybe you can finally show her Ted Lasso? Tell her to be curious, not judgemental.

She's casually watched Adaptation, thinks it was stupid, and confuses it with Matchstick Men... None of which makes any sense!

Her biggest gripe about Ending Things was that there was no point supposedly. Also worth noting, she HATES existentialism. So, maybe I should've known better...

This is why Wife should have married me. I’d never subject her to such movies and never will!

Also probably why things didn’t work out with her and Big Pete , even after @littlepete was born.

Feb 9, 2022 13:08:26 GMT UT said:

This is why Wife should have married me. I’d never subject her to such movies and never will!

Also probably why things didn’t work out with her and Big Pete , even after @littlepete was born.

Word on the sheets is thing didn't work out with Big Pete because his Pete was too Big for Wife to handle.