LOVE AND FEAR FILLED THE HOUSE ON ANGEL STREET!

In London, a former detective (Frank Pettingell) begins to suspect that something isn’t quite right in a household where a murder was committed years ago.

After spending some time in Spain making documentary shorts about the civil war, director Thorold Dickinson returned for what would become one of his best-known films, an adaptation of a popular stage play. The 1944 Hollywood remake would have a more lasting impact, but this one stays closer to the original story and remains a sharp psychological Victorian thriller.

Intense performance by Anton Walbrook, and Pettingell adds a sense of humor as the supremely confident ex-cop.

1940-U.K. 89 min. B/W. Directed by Thorold Dickinson. Screenplay: A.R. Rawlinson, Bridget Boland. Play: Patrick Hamilton. Cast: Anton Walbrook (Paul Mallen), Diana Wynyard (Bella Mallen), Frank Pettingell (B.G. Rough), Cathleen Cordell, Robert Newton, Jimmy Hanley.

Trivia: Released in the U.S. as Angel Street. When MGM bought the remake rights, they tried to destroy the negative of this film but failed. 

Last word: “Whilst I was in the Midlands – and oh, how drab and gray and miserable are the manufacturing towns – I was sent the scenario for Gaslight. I haven’t seen or read the play, but there on the dull December day, in that depressing town, I sat and read the story, enthralled and at once I felt I must accept […] It is such a marvelous play; the man is so incredibly wicked. Shakespeare never created anyone half so terrible. So I felt it was a great opportunity for an actor and such a different character from my recent ones. On the continent I got into a lot of trouble because I would insist on playing the hero and then the villain; one day being a gentleman, the next a low thief.” (Walbrook in 1940, Picturegoer Magazine)