Love or Torment, be Cautious of Your Husband!

Young girl Paula's aunt was brutally murdered under her portrait. Paula left London in order to forget this horrible nightmare, and she met the elegant young Anton. Being passionately pursued by Anton, Paula quickly fell in love.

They returned to their old house in London to build a sweet home. However, whenever Anton left home, Paula would hear strange noises and see the gas lamp fading, but her husband told her that it was only an illusion. The death of her aunt, the hint of her husband, the contempt of her maid, the oppressive environment, driving Paula on the verge of being crazy.

The director George Cukor, who has directed My Fair Lady, has been quite successful in creating a suspenseful and tense atmosphere.

Hitchcock once said that horror can make the audience jump in panic, while suspense keeps the audience in a state of doubt and anxiety. If a group of people are sitting playing cards and suddenly there is an explosion, the tension may only last for 15 seconds, but if you change the way you shoot, at first the bomb counting down, then people playing cards, the audience will hold their breath for the next 10 minutes.

And in Gaslight, the bomb is the gentle and considerate husband Anton. Watching the movie in the dark room, we are all concerned with the countdown of the bomb. When was the bomb planted? Probably when Anton took Paula's letters from the paino score violently, or even earlier, when Anton persuaded Paula to return to the old house where the murder had taken place.

Anton, the perfect husband played by Charles Bowyer, is a master of psychology, calm and ruthless, pushing the heroine into a desperate situation step by step. The trick he uses is the most common method in psychology: psychological suggestion.

Anton has premeditated. he arranged a romantic encounter with Paula, crazy love, lightning marriage. When they return to London according to the plan, Anton extended the claws to Paula, began to gradually brainwash her.

In the process of Anton's brainwashing of Paula, there are several steps:

1 Information blockade

That is to say, let the other party be exposed to a kind of information continuously for a period of time. In the film, from the brooch incident during a visit to the Tower of London, the portrait that was taken away, the watch that was lost at the party, to the letter denying that Paula had found it in the paino score, Anton sends the same message to Paula: Your memory is getting worse and worse. You always forget what you have done. You are hallucinating. Such messages constantly hit Paula, making her more and more distrustful of her feelings, absent-minded and mentally exhausted.

2. Relationship blockade

That is, to restrict the personal freedom of the other party. From the first day he moved into the old house in London, Anton searched for reasons to forbid his wife's contact with the outside world, turning a deaf ear to the visits of enthusiastic neighbors, using physical discomfort as an excuse for the invitation to the ball, the old housekeeper's deafness as an excuse for inconvenient communication, and the newly hired maid also told him to report only to himself when something happened. It is nominally the care of the wife, but in fact it is to isolate the wife and apply the blockade of the relationship.

3. Moderate threat

Either with violence or with hysterical ranting. Anton obviously used the latter, and whenever Paula showed dissatisfaction and resistance, Anton took out her husband's dignity, and with a little sternness, Paula was exhausted.

4. Establish authority

That is, to emphasize one's own correctness. In the movie, Anton is good at using witnesses and physical evidence to prove that he is right. When the portrait is taken down, he asks the housekeeper and the maid to swear on the Bible that it is not the housekeeper or the maid who takes down the portrait, but poor Paula. This is a problem of dead ends in thinking. Those who cry out for a thief are often thieves. But how can Paula, who panics, suspect her husband? Anton also "cleverly" arranged the brooch and watch incident. To be honest, I don't know how he did it now. Is he not only a gem thief but also a magic master? In short, he always makes sure that the evidence is irrefutable, and then drives the heroine crazy with disappointment and helplessness.

Sure enough, this is the beginning of Paula's nightmare, Anton's brainwashing again and again, Paula's psychological defense collapsed. She hears footsteps overhead, sees the gas lamp dim, and asks the half-deaf housekeeper for confirmation. She has deep doubts about her memory and mental condition under her husband's constant hints. At the end of the film, even at the end, the detective reveals the truth to her, and once her husband comes back, she only needs to repeat to her: "That's just your illusion", and she hesitates again.

I think Paula's personality traits are also influenced by her own experience. Paula has no father, her mother died very early, fostered in her aunt's home, coupled with the delicate artistic temperament, so she will naturally be sensitive, fragile and insecure personality, which to some extent is the main reason why she is easily hinted.

However, Paula has also resisted, which is called "self-worth protection rebellion" in psychology. People sometimes react to external influences because of the motivation of self-worth protection.

Under the manipulation of Anton, Paula intuitively feels that it is unfair to suppress, but unfortunately this weak resistance is completely vulnerable in front of the powerful Anton. In Anton's cleverly constructed suggestion cage, Paula suffers from mental torture every day and is at a loss.

Just then, detective Berlin appeared, he broke Anton's blockade, the truth came out, Paula did not end up in the madhouse. In the movie, Anton's criminal motive is a few precious gems. In real life, such a husband who is crazy about gems is rare. However, malicious psychological hints in the family are not uncommon, and gradually evolve into a tributary of cold violence in domestic violence. Rogers, an American humanistic psychologist, once said that love is deep understanding and acceptance.

True love is based on respect and equality, and any oppression in the name of love is a lie of love.

Love yourself, and don’t be blind for love.