Fanny by Gaslight (1944)

Ann Stephens (Fanny) is sent to boarding school and returns home as Phyllis Calvert (Fanny) to look after her family. However, things take a turn when her true identity is revealed. According to the morals of the day, this becomes a burden to her which she must either accept and toe the line or rebel against. Both options lead to unhappiness. Or do they? The story is saved by philandering gentleman James Mason (Lord Manderstoke) who makes his entrance in the film with a wonderful delivery of the line "Get out of my way". Unfortunately, we don't get enough of Mason. Other cast members are good but Calvert and rising political star Stewart Granger (Harry) are pretty lucklustre with other characters outshining them. There are some good scenes and the film builds towards an inevitable showdown between Mason and Granger but it never really breaks into stride. It's a bit boring and has an unsatisfying predictability.

I first saw this movie at one of the local movie theaters around Times Square, New York, that frequently featured second run British movies. My original intention was to see James Mason and Stewart Granger face off against each other. Instead, I found myself falling in love with the heroine played by Phyllis Calvert, who immediately became my favorite British actress.The story may smack of soap opera; I've followed several in my time, and yet this story, admittedly overdone, I found to be very sympathetic, and immediately found myself falling in with the main protagonist, and wishing her to eventually prevail, despite all the adversity she had to face from so many individuals.I have continued to love this movie and have gone back to seeing it many times. I admit that Stewart Granger is rather wooden at times and James Mason appears only at certain strategic moments. However, the player whom I found myself yearning more to see was Jean Kent; fortunately for her, she was given full opportunity to display her complete diversity in subsequent films, many of which I have also seen. (I would like to comment that Ms. Kent is happily still with us, approaching 90 as of next year.)I agree that the moment where Stuart Lindsell as Fanny's natural father is about to kill himself because of pressures exerted by his erstwhile wife having become too much is right out of a horror story, at the moment where one sees those multiple mirror images.Certain other players in this film I have also found to be quite believable considering the context - Wilfrid Lawson as Chunks, Amy Veness as Mrs. Heaviside, and perhaps one or two others.In addition to James Mason, the individual contributions by Margaretta Scott and Cathleen Nesbitt are also sufficiently believable to invite our intense dislike, as each throwing another obstacle in the path of our heroine.I understand that these impressions are purely individual; as with any work of art, we experience such in our own way. In my case, it made a very warm, positive impression on me - I cannot say exactly why. I would recommend it to anyone who likes high Victorian melodrama, mindful that I am not necessarily in a majority with my impression, but that is how I am. Chacun e son gout, as they say.I just finished viewing Madonna of the Seven Moons, another film in this same Gainsborough series, and also featuring Phyllis Calvert, Jean Kent,and Stewart Granger. While this latter is a fascinating story based upon a multiple personality, I found it to be inferior in its cohesiveness and ability to draw the viewer in, compared with Fanny by Gaslight, which I have just commented on. I could easily imagine that the superior direction by Anthony Asquith may have something to do with it.

The second Gainsborough costume melodrama (rushed into production after the huge, unexpected success of Regency romance THE MAN IN GREY)is a more sober work than it's predecessor. Set in the constricting Victorian class system, FANNY seems to be striving for greater realism than THE MAN IN GREY, in part due to the critical whipping of the former film as "trash". Three of of GREY's main line-up return: Phyllis Calvert (playing put-upon heroine Fanny), Stewart Granger (Harry) and the one, the only James Mason (Lord Manderstoke). As with GREY and MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS, the film engages in doubling of it's characters to make it's point. FANNY depicts a Victorian England that is polite and pretty on the outside, yet teeming with moral decay on it's underbelly. From the opening shot where a young Fanny rolls a ball into her father's The Shades (a den of inequity), good/bad, poor/wealthy, innocence/depravity is juxtaposed. Fanny herself is not immune to this, as, after her father (John Laurie) is killed by Lord Manderstoke (who gets off easily at the fixed trial), she discover he's not really her father at all, and she is actually the illegitimate product of a love affair between her mother and a man who is now a high-ranking politician. Her biological father secretly arranges for Fanny to live with him, and in time reveals himself. However, personal and public lives collide as his horrible wife (who is having an affair with Manderstoke)threatens to expose him if her doesn't give her a divorce. He commits suicide, and Fanny is left with no-one to turn to but the dashing Harry...and Lord Manderstoke still lurks ominously in the background... Calvert again catches the audience's sympathy as Fanny- she, like Olivia de Havilland, could make these heroines believable. Granger seems to be lacking most of the screen presence and charisma he brought to THE MAN IN THE GREY (where he and Calvert made a lovely couple), perhaps it is his stuffy role as the obligatory romantic hero. Mason dominates every scene he appears- sexy, sadistic, sardonic, cruel yet possibly sympathetic as Manderstoke. His sadistic charm is best illustrated in a great scene with the adulterous wife- Wife: Really, don't you care for me AT ALL? Mason: (Looking up at her, while twirling a flower in his fingers)No. (This is said in his inimitable voice). He is completely dastardly, yet at the same time, irresistibly attractive. Jean Kent gets one of her early key roles as Lucy, Fanny's childhood friend who offers herself to Manderstoke. The doubling is reminiscent of THE MAN IN GREY (Lockwood and Calvert), yet Lucy is much less callous than Hesther. Instead, she's a victim of Victorian society and her own weaknesses.

I did want to like this British 40s movie, but there's just too much against it - Phyllis Calvert, who acquires a terribly chic accent straight from school; wooden Stewart Granger as the parliamentary secretary who loves Fanny; John Laurie as her dad with an illicit business on the side; politicians self-destructing; and far too little of James Mason, here giving yet another brooding and sadistic, sardonic aristocrat.'Fanny By Gaslight' does try - it manages to get subject matter into it that must have seemed very daring in the 1940s, it starts well and grows into some good scenes between Fanny ('only Hooper') and her employer's wife. Then - perhaps because of Granger, IMO - it starts to backfire badly and become a bore. A great disappointment.