Gaslight (1940 film)

Gaslight is a 1940 British film directed by Thorold Dickinson which stars Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, and features Frank Pettingell. The film adheres more closely to the original play upon which it is based Patrick Hamiltons Gas Light 1938 than the betterknown 1944 MGM adaptation. The play had been shown on Broadway as Angel Street, so when the film was released in the United States it was given the same name. According to the TCM database, it has also been released in the UK as A Strange Case of Murder.

Paul uses the gas lamps to search the closed off upper floors, which causes the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly. When Bella comments on the lights dimming, he tells her she is imagining things. Bella is persuaded she is hearing noises, unaware that Paul enters the upper floors from the house next door. The sinister interpretation of the change in light levels is part of a larger pattern of deception to which Bella is subjected. It is revealed Paul is a bigamist. He is the wanted Louis Bauer, who has returned to the house to search for the rubies he was unable to find after the murder.Encouraged by the success of the play and film, MGM bought the remake rights, but with a clause insisting that all existing prints of Dickinsons version be destroyed, even to the point of trying to destroy the negative, so that it would not compete with their more highly publicized 1944 film starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten. ........

Source: Wikipedia