This often results in that person experiencing a significant loss of self-esteem and perceived self-worth, making them easier to control - and causing them to feel responsible for, or deserving of, abuse and mistreatment. Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person secretly sows seeds of doubt in another person, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment. One of the reasons is the cunning and cruel way abusers have learned to manipulate their victims into thinking they have no other options or, worse yet, that they play an important role in their own abuse. Individuals who have never suffered at the hands of an abuser often wonder how it’s possible for someone to find themselves in a situation where they are perpetually physically or emotionally victimized by another person. Not the best Gainsborough melodrama, but it is delightfully artful trash.October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so we explore the films responsible for bringing the term “gaslighting” into popular discourse. It delivers plenty of what the audience paid for, principally Mason snorting like a lusty horse. Naturally, the plot resolves with a duel at misty dawn. Indeed, Jean Kent is more vivacious in a role presumably not substantial enough for Margaret Lockwood. Phyllis lacks charisma and beauty as the demure Fanny, and is dominated by the surly James Mason, again playing the brutal, immoderate aristocrat. When she suffers, she is a washerwoman mucking in with the uncouth mob. When the heroine succumbs to illicit love, it's all the way to a hotel in bohemian Paris. When Granger is on his hind legs declaiming that everyone deserves a fair chance, he may as well be campaigning for Attlee. The film's subtext is the toxicity of the class system and the callousness of a society where the poor and weak are abandoned without hope. so the film was heavily cut for US release.īut with Hollywood soon to enter the McCarthy era, maybe it was the politics that offended. Fanny is raised above a brothel and eventually cohabits with her broadminded suitor. Typical Gainsborough melodrama set in 1880s London with Phyllis Calvert as a good girl born outside marriage who is thrown to the mercy of Victorian hypocrisy before being rescued by a progressive MP (Stewart Granger). There is much that is poignant in the novel, more detail of the brothel activities and characters who are staunch, generous and kind despite their lowly circumstances. Incidentally, the novel is told by an elderly Fanny who has retired in a French Pension, looking back over her life. Note a young James Mason as a villain and a very young Stewart Grainger in their early careers. Made during the war, the film does well and is a good Sunday afternoon watch. The family falls on hard times and Fanny has to make her way relying on family friends and a long-standing friend, Lucy, who has becomes a dancer and actor. The girl is educated and is innocent of her step-father's double occupation. She had been born out of wedlock and was adopted by her mother's subsequent husband who ran a brothel "downstairs". The dominant theme is that of class prejudice where a government minister falls in love with a young lady of dubious background. I was pleasantly surprised that Cinemaparadiso had this film as I had recently read the original novel hidden away in the "Classics" section of the local library. Actors: James Mason, Ann Stephens, Gloria Sydney, Phyllis Calvert, Wilfrid Lawson, Stewart Granger, Jean Kent, Margaretta Scott, Nora Swinburne, Cathleen Nesbitt, Helen Haye, John Laurie, Stuart Lindsell, Amy Veness, Ann Wilton, Guy Le Feuvre, Esma Cannon, Beresford Egan, Helen Goss, Guy Gy-Mas Directors: Anthony Asquith Producers: Edward Black Writers: Michael Sadleir, Doreen Montgomery, Aimée Stuart Aka: Man of Evil Studio: ITV Genres: Classics, Drama, Romance Collections: Getting to Know., Getting to Know: James Mason, Top 10 British Actresses of the 1940s, Top Films Periodically the scoundrel of a Lord crosses her path, always to tragic effect. Meeting him and then falling in love with his young adviser Harry Somerford (Stewart Granger) leads to a life of ups and downs and conflict between the classes. When her mother dies shortly after, she next discovers that her real father is in fact a well-respected politician. She then finds that her family has for many years been running a bordello next door to their home. Returning to 1870's London after finishing at boarding school, Fanny (Phyllis Calvert) witnesses the death of her father in a fight with Lord Manderstoke (James Mason).
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