MURDER MOST FOUL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 305, 27 April 1945, Page 18

MURDER MOST FOUL

HE other evening I saw a stage presentation by the Wellington Repertory Society of Patrick Hamilton’s play Gaslight. An adequate, though not brilliant, performance of a psychological murder-thriller with a stuffy Victorian atmosphere, it provided an agreeable evening off the chain for a film critic who happens to have a soft spot for this type of melodrama. But, being a film critic, I couldn’t help remembering as I saw the play that Hollywood has made a version of it, with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer as the stars. Since Miss Bergman has won an Academy Award for her acting in the role of the wife there isn’t, in fact, much likelihood that we shall be allowed to forget this film. However, I had an uneasy recollection also of having read somewhere about a British screen version of this same play by Patrick Hamilton. And then, later, I came across the facts-and they reveal what is, in its way, as horrid a crime as any perpetrated in the story. There was a 'British production called Gaslight, made in 1940 with Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook as the stars, and with Thorold Dickinson as director. Yet we in New Zealand, and thousands of other picturegoers all over the world, will never see it, for the unpleasant truth is that this British production, a successful one from all accounts, was callously murdered to serve the interests of a section of the film industry that is more interested in profits than in anything else. The British Gaslight was put quietly out of the way so that Hollywood could have the field to itself. It may have been bad conscience, or just merely good business, that made the American studio re-name its production The Murder in Thornton Square for British consumption. ‘THE _inside facts of the case are contied in the following letter written in the spring of 1944 to the CineTechnician by Sidney Cole, who was the editor of Gaslight: "When we found that the picture was not to be shown in the United States of America," he says, "those of us who understood the economic and political set-up in the world film industry, were not really surprised. . . We waited eagerly to see if British ‘National had succeeded in breaking down this opposition. But we were staggered to find that, on the contrary, it had apparently acquiesced in the banning of. Gaslight from American screens by selling the American film rights of the story... Somehow it did not strike us as the most effective way of drawing attention to the merits of British pictures. Hollywood proceeded to make its own version, and America will presumably never know that the British original existed. "What seems really monstrous to us, though, is that the British rights of the story were also necessarily (I use-the word in-a commercial and not

a@ moral sense) sold at the same time, in order, I take it, to clear the way in the British market for the Hollywood picture. Filmgoers in this country must forget that there ever was a British film of this name; they will certainly never again be able to see it. "Feeling a little sentimental about all this, I tried recently through British National and Anglo-American to borrow a copy, in order to look once more at a job of British film craftsmanship in which I was proud to have assisted. But I was told I was too late. Not only every copy, but the original negative itself had been destroyed. "The film is, of course, an ephemeral medium, but even so, it is still sometimes possible to see films which were made as many as 30 years ago-some material record remains of whatever skill and enthusiasm went into the making of them. But with GaslightOUR Gaslight-barely four years have elapsed, and it seems that nothing whatever remains of our work except the satisfaction that all of us felt, and still feel, at having worked on a very fine British picture. But, speaking for British technicians generally, we need a greater incentive than memory. We need encouragement, too. The history of Gaslight is many things, but it is not encouraging." * * * | bo commenting on this letter, the London Observer of July 16, 1944, said that a "curious point of conscience" is raised by it. "Small blame attaches to the Americans, who found a good thing on the market and prudently bought it. Monstrous blame should attach to. a system that makes such a bargain possible." (And what about the playwright himself: did he or did he not acquiesce in the deal?) "The encouragement and protection of good films should be a national charge, at all times, and particularly at this time, In point of fact, Gaslight has become, in a way, a national responsibility. Mr. Cole is mistaken in thinking that all the copies were destroyed. One copy survived. It is in the Library of the British Film ‘Institute -and that serves everybody right." * * % E don’t yet know what Hollywood's Gaslight is like, because we haven't yet seen it. It may be a good film. But when it does reach our screens, I hope you will not forget that behind the performances of Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer and the work of the American director and technicians are the unhappy ghosts of Diana Wynyard, Anton Walbrook, and all those others whose labour went up in smoke.