Gas light and shade
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Gas light and shade |
| Original title | Fanny by Gaslight |
| Country of production | United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1944 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Anthony Asquith |
| script | Doreen Montgomery |
| production | Edward Black |
| music | Cedric Mallabey |
| camera | Arthur Crabtree |
| cut | RE Dearing |
| occupation | |
| |
Gaslight and Shadow is a 1944 British costume film melodrama directed by Anthony Asquith, starring Phyllis Calvert , James Mason and Stewart Granger . The story is based on the novel Fanny by Gaslight (1940) by Michael Sadleir .
action
London, 1870. Young Fanny Hopwood and her best friend Lucy Beckett are playing with a ball in the street when it falls into a cellar. When she wants to get him back, Fanny discovers a wine bar with an attached brothel called "The Hopwood Shades" in the basement of her father William Hopwood's house. This discovery causes her parents to send her to boarding school soon after Fanny received a mysterious birthday present from a certain Clive Seymore. Fanny returns home ten years later, but the happy atmosphere is shaken by an incident when a high-born bon vivant named Lord Manderstoke fights his way free in The Hopwood Shades. When they want to throw him out, there is a fight that ends with old Hopwood falling under the wheels of an approaching horse-drawn carriage and his life. During the subsequent police investigation, Manderstoke is exonerated, instead the family is forced to close their establishment. Close to her own death, Mrs. Hopwood sends her fanny to the mysterious Clive Seymore of yore, where she will live from now on. Seymore is a minister in the British government and is also Fanny's biological father. Since this revelation would lead to a tangible scandal, Fanny has to lead the life of an employee in her father's house: Fanny is hired as a maid and maid without further ado.
While working for Seymore, she meets his secretary Harry Somerford, and a mutual affection develops between the two, although Harry has the impression that Fanny must be Seymore's lover, especially since they both have a relationship with one another, as one would have said at the time. not appropriate. Seymore's wife, Alicia, shares the same impression as Harry and decides to use this as a lever to force a divorce from Seymore as she has an ardent affair with the esteemed Lord Manderstoke. When Seymore comes under pressure, he is forced to reveal his true relationship with Fanny, whereupon Alicia, in collaboration with her lover Manderstoke, threatens to publicly expose him for the paternity of an illegitimate child - a denunciation that would end his political career. Seymore finds himself trapped in a vicious circle and kills himself as a result. Fanny has to flee her home and takes a job in a workers' pub, where mostly rough figures cavort. There she is tracked down by Harry, and the two fall in love, even if Somerford's female relatives raise massive objections to this connection between two people from different social classes. It is feared that a liaison between an upper class man and a simple, illegitimate girl could destroy Harry's reputation.
Somerford doesn't care about any of this; he knows he loves Fanny. And so he is ready to deliberately ignore all concerns about the other Fanny. But Fanny doesn't want him to destroy his life and career for her sake and secretly leaves him. In a slightly disreputable dance establishment, Fanny and her childhood friend Lucy encounter the unsympathetic and scheming Lord Manderstoke again, who turns out to be a rather sleazy guy. When this threatens to be assaulted, Harry appears at the right moment, who proves to be the chevaleresque gentleman he actually is. Now Fanny and Harry are very clear that they belong together. One day they both travel to Paris, where they happen to meet Lucy again as a dancer. During their visit backstage they encounter Lord Manderstoke again, who has since become Lucy's lover. After Harry threw a glass of champagne on his face in contempt to express his disgust, the Lord challenges him to a duel. Harry and Manderstoke duel with pistols at dawn. Manderstoke is killed in the process, but Harry remains badly wounded. At his sickbed it turns out that Fanny and Harry are siblings, and only this kind of love has made both so strong and, moreover, will give Harry the strength to fully recover.
Production notes
Gaslicht und Schatten premiered in May 1944. The German premiere (original with subtitles) took place on November 16, 1945, the German dubbed version started on October 4, 1946.
John Bryan designed the film set, Elizabeth Haffenden provided the costumes. Jack Asher was a simple cameraman. Louis Levy took over the musical direction.
Gaslicht und Schatten was the second most successful film in Great Britain after David Lean's Wonderful Times when it premiered in 1944 .
useful information
In the second half of the Second World War, the producing film company Gainsborough Pictures , starting with The Lord in Gray , developed into the most important company when it came to producing opulent costume dramas and tearful love tugs. Almost all of Gainsborough's films in the 1940s, almost all of which were released on the German market immediately after the end of the war, developed - “although critics wrote of them with contempt”, as Jörg Helbig recalled - to big box office magnets in Europe, occasionally also on the US market and also produced numerous film stars, above all Margaret Lockwood , James Mason, Patricia Roc , Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger. Gainsborough's greatest hits include Gaslight and Shadow, Madonna of the Seven Moons , Cornwall Rhapsody , The Woman Without a Heart , Three Marriages , Dangerous Voyage and Paganini .
Reviews
“Once again, three great British mimes spice up the Victorian melodrama Gaslicht und Schatten: James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger. James Mason shines once again as an unscrupulous villain with slightly diabolical features. (...) Everything prepared a little pompously. "
The Lexicon of International Films says: “Entertaining costume melodrama from Victorian England. (...) James Mason shines in his standard role as an unscrupulous bon vivant. "
The Movie & Video Guide found this film, which ran under Man of Evil in the US , was a "sophisticated but cumbersome film" and was also "exaggerated and not very effective".
Halliwell's Film Guide saw this as "a high-profile Victorian melodrama ... uncompromising ... and on a fairly high budget for its time".
Individual evidence
- ^ Jörg Helbig: History of British Film. Verlag KB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1999. p. 82
- ↑ Gas light and shadow in DamalsKino
- ↑ Gas light and shadow. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2020 .
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 822
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 335
Web links
- Gas light and shadow in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Fanny by Gaslight on screenonline.org