Man of Evil (1944) User Reviews

Part Dickens, Part Soap Opera

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 8 May 2009]

Fanny By Gaslight was one of Gainsborough Pictures romances starring its greatest stars, Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger, and James Mason all in their salad days. It's a Victorian soap opera with a lot of Dickens like class consciousness thrown into the mix.

The best works of Charles Dickens like David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Great Expectations have the common thread of a young man of limited means making his way in the world who with a combination of hard work and good circumstances comes out on top at the end of the story. Fanny By Gaslight is just that kind of a story, except that Dickens would never have his protagonist be a woman. But Fanny Hooper as played by Phyllis Calvert is as good a Dickens hero as you will ever find.

When Calvert returns from boarding school her father, John Laurie, is killed in a fight ejecting a drunken James Mason from his establishment which is just this side of a brothel. When he dies she finds out that Laurie was not her real father, that she is the daughter of a prominent politician Stuart Lindsell. She's taken into his house as a maid. Calvert also makes the acquaintance of rising young politician Stewart Granger who is a protégé of Lindsell and Granger falls big time for Calvert.

Eventually all this becomes known about Calvert's background and it leads to an inevitable climax between Mason and Granger. How it gets to that point is the crux of the film.

Several incidents from the 19th century are used. The sex scandals are pieced from those involving Charles Dilke and Charles Parnell. Lindsell's suicide, jumping in front of a train is a recreation of the death of William Huskisson killed accidentally though by George Stephenson's newly invented locomotive.

Calvert and Granger are a winning pair of lovers and James Mason is one hateful aristocratic villain, a privileged man who lives to enjoy his privileges at the expense of others as Phillip Barry said.

I was surprised at how well Fanny By Gaslight holds up today. In fact the Hays Office had it banned from the USA for a while. Maybe that's its secret.

Nobody ever went to see a melodrama expecting it to deal in moral ambiguities.

[JamesHitchcock · 8/10 · 14 September 2021]

During the 1940s the British studio Gainsborough Pictures became famous for the "Gainsborough melodramas", a series of films which generally had a highly dramatic plot. Most of them had a period setting, although some such as "Madonna of the Seven Moons" had a contemporary or near-contemporary one. They can be considered as "women's pictures" in that they were primarily aimed at a female audience. (During the war, with so many men serving in the Armed Forces, women made up the greater part of cinema audiences). Unlike many Hollywood "women's pictures" which revolved around a central female character, however, they often featured strong male characters in prominent leading roles.

"Fanny by Gaslight" was the second "Gainsborough melodrama" following "The Man in Grey" from the previous year. It is based upon a novel by Michael Sadleir- many Gainsborough films were based upon novels- although it makes some changes to its plot. The story is set in late Victorian England, and although Sadleir's ovel was written as recently as 1940 it is strongly reminiscent of the work of Victorian authors, especially Dickens. (Although Dickens never wrote a novel with a female protagonist).

The title character, Fanny Hopwood, is the daughter of a seemingly respectable middle-class London family. Her life is turned upside down when William Hopwood, the man she believes to be her father, is killed in a fight with a dissolute nobleman named Lord Manderstoke. Following this event, Fanny discovers that Hopwood was far from respectable but made his living running a sleazy nightclub. (For which read brothel- the film leaves us in little doubt as to the true nature of this establishment, even if in 1944 this could not actually be made explicit). Fanny also discovers that Hopwood was not her real father. Her real father is a politician named Clive Seymour, and Fanny goes to live with him, but for the sake of respectability and his political career he cannot publicly acknowledge her as his illegitimate daughter, so he passes her off as a servant in his home. While living with him she falls in love with his younger colleague Harry Somerford, but the evil Manderstoke continues to dog her steps.

The three leading roles, Fanny, Harry and Manderstoke, were played by Phyllis Calvert, Stewart Granger and James Mason who had all also starred in "The Man in Grey". Gainsborough only had a small pool of stars acting for them, and the same names came up repeatedly in their films; Calvert and Granger also co-starred in "Madonna of the Seven Moons". Other Gainsborough stars included Margaret Lockwood and Patricia Roc, both of whom appeared alongside Mason in "The Wicked Lady", perhaps the best remembered Gainsborough melodrama today. Manderstoke is very similar to Lord Rohan, Mason's character in "The Man in Grey". Both are arrogant, cynical, aristocratic libertines, men who never do anything honourable and yet remain very touchy about their honour, so touchy that they are prepared to kill anyone they believe has dishonoured them.

The film was initially banned in the US. The word "brothel" might not have been used, but the true nature of Hopwood's establishment was made all too clear for the liking of the Hays Office. When it was eventually released in America in a bowdlerised version the with 17 minutes removed, it was a box-office flop, even though it had been a great success in Britain. The American title was "Man of Evil", which strikes me as inappropriate because it suggests that Manderstoke rather than Fanny is the main character. Although Manderstoke plays an important part in the plot he only appears sporadically and does not dominate the film the way Rohan dominates "The Man in Grey".

Granger (who in later life could be very critical of his early pictures) said that he "didn't like" the film because of its "drippy characters"; he seemed to specialise in playing either villains or dashing, swashbuckling heroes, and a clean-cut young man like Harry who works at a desk job was not really the sort of role he enjoyed playing. Actors, however, are not always the best judges of their own films, and "Fanny by Gaslight" is in my view one of the best of the Gainsborough melodramas, perhaps the very best. Calvert- like Roc and Lockwood one of the loveliest British actresses of this period- makes Fanny an irresistible heroine, and Sadleir's story, at least in this adaptation, is a good one, and builds up to a gripping climax. The morality of the story may be a bit too clear-cut for sophisticated modern tastes, but then nobody ever went to see a melodrama expecting it to deal in moral ambiguities. One of the best British films of the period. 8/10.

Calvert, Granger and Mason re-group for this Victorian melodrama....

[jem132 · 7/10 · 31 March 2008]

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.

Patchy, if entertaining melodrama, but FAR too little James Mason.

[alice liddell · 7/10 · 6 October 1999]

Poorly paced, but highly entertaining, and quite thought-provoking melodrama. It is typical Gainsborough fare: shrouded Victorian settings; innocent, swooning heroines, who have the most godawful horrors thrown at them in an unenviably short stretch of time; 'dashing' (i.e. stilted) heroes; arousingly sadistic villains played by James Mason; the intrusion of music hall cheek into an already vulgarised 'gentility'; good-hearted Cockney servants, here called Chunks; a brazenly frank, unheard of in contemporary Hollywood, treatment of sexuality.

In many ways, FANNY comes straight out of Victorian melodrama. The hypocrisy of Victorian England as essayed in Dickens and Conan Doyle is rife here: the delicate pattern of respectability is shown to be infinitely fragile. This is why the accumulation of Fanny's traumas is so plausible - one toppling domino of the edifice of respectability leads to a complete and far-reaching collapse.

The result is a failure of patriarchy, an oppression split against itself. Look at the frightening scene where Fanny's 'real' father is shown in splintered mirror reflection - the pressure turns him, Jekyll-and-Hyde-like, from a feckless, passive fraud, into a figure from a horror film, as he foresees his own death, the only option to his self-created web of deceit (wow, you really do get into it!). Fanny's first family home stands over her supposed father's burlesque house, home to many of the Victorian great and good. The fact that she has two fathers emphasises this pervasive dichotomy.

Women, in this double world, have only two options open to them, and they have a rotten deal in both. If they try to live with integrity and decency, like Fanny, they are buffeted, nay fairly walloped by a most malevolent Fate (or the workings of a corrupt social machination, whatever you want to call it). Fanny's swoonings are less conventional Victoriana than blows dealt by forces beyond her.

If, on the other hand, women transgress, like Lucy, or her father's wife (both, appropriately, if cheerfully xenophobically, linked to Frenchness), they are equally vulnerable to caprice, as their lovers turn against them, or abandon them. The film is also very good on how the idea of 'woman' is constructed in patriarchal society - there are many elaborate scenes of dressing and undressing, distortions of 'natural' femininity. Class construction is analysed too, also limiting and defeating men.

The title of the film might seem oblique, or merely atmospheric, until we note all the gaslamps standing suggestively between characters; part of a wider phallic plot, seen most interestingly, less obviously, between Stewart Granger and James Mason. Mason is perversely the most sympathetic character in the film. I say perversely, because, for the first hour and a half, he is a real monster, a glorious, diabolical, handsome, unredeemably vicious, incredibly sexy monster, who clearly has the filthiest, and most elaborate, Sadean sex ever. He is the ultimate transgressor, taboo in both the Underworld and respectable society, the two being complicit in the same corrupting system. He is only on screen in annoyingly , if appropriately brief, spurts - the first fifteen minutes of the film is electrifying entertainment. He is an aristocrat, locus of all the fears, yet desires (and 1940s British women worshipped him) of the British middle classes.

But when he goes to France - as all four protagonists do: it is a site of freedom from the ubiquitous repression of Britain, but also the ultimate venue of closure where everything is fatally brought to a head - he becomes a much more understandable, tragic figure. We see he has been demonised by respectable society as a demonic Id that must be cast out. His reduction from malevolent swaggerer to simian depressive is a shock to behold. His forcing of the duel is less a matter of honour than a poignant wishing for death. Mason is outstanding, turning a potential caricature into a figure of far greater depth. He is the Fassbinder hero of this melodrama, the tormented transgressor; not the two protagonists, whose desire for conventionality will only replicate the system that tortured them in the first place.

What is finally remarkable about the film is how these issues managed to get aired at the height of World War II. Gainsborough films were by far the most popular among British audiences at a time when duty, austerity, self-denial was mandatory. These films, and especially FANNY, by contrast, became the focus of all those repressed desires - a dissatiafaciton with authority and patriarchy; the thrill of (particularly female) transgression; the impulse to excess; a rejection of duty and tradition; all the things in real life audience members were supposed to be defending. Is it any surprise Labour got in the following year? That is why the films, beyond their stereotypical melodrama, remain enduringly fascinating. Just more James Mason, please...mmm.

A pioneering, innovative, film willing to take risks with its subject matter. Could contain spoilers.

[alexandra-25 · 1 August 2005]

Fanny by Gaslight is an inspirational film, in that it is willing to take risks with the subject matter which not only questions British morals, but exposes its hypocrisy regarding them! James Mason illustrates the depth of his talent, and makes the film all the more worth watching.

Fanny being the epitome of Victorian double standards illustrates to us why the feminist movement came into being. Her oppression eventually produces a rebellious woman in that she agrees to marry Harry just to be defiant, rather than to conform to the man-made idea of marriage. Therefore, Fanny's decision to marry Harry is not meant to produce a cliché happy ending. In this respect the producers of this controversial film are taking more risks. It is that they are willing to take risks with this film that the producers need recognition. It is about time contemporary film producers, directors etc. were willing to do the same instead of playing it safe, culminating in producing very bland films which are an insult to the art. By doing this, the only risks contemporary film makers are taking is that of loosing audiences.. This void will be filled by French film producers etc. who have already spotted the gap in the art of film making, and are filling it fast!

Fanny, I'm Not Your Daddy

[Lejink · 7/10 · 12 August 2020]

Another of the very popular Gainsborough Pictures productions made in England in the mid-40's, "Fanny By Gaslight" might just be somewhat transparent, sensationalist and sentimental sub-Dickensian entertainment, but for all that, I happily enjoyed it and can readily comprehend its success with its wartime viewing public.

Adapted from a hit novel of the day, its story, set in late 19th century London revolves around young Fanny, Phyllis Calvert, in another of her do-gooder period-roles, who we first see as a child and who it's fair to say, enjoys an unconventional childhood. Not only do her parents unbeknownst to her run a brothel for high-society gents, but she loses both her father and mother in a short period of time, the former at the hands of James Mason's truculent Lord Manderstroke. Years later, now a young adult, she learns her true parentage and is reunited happily with the prosperous Cabinet minister who obviously had a fling with her mother and fathered her, only for her jealous stepmother to force him to self-destruction under threat of exposing his illegitimate daughter to the public gaze.

Fanny's eventful young life surely is one of snakes and ladders on a grand scale and this really is that big one on the board at square 99 taking you all the way back down again as she is turned out onto the street and struggles to find any kind of work, before ending up helping out at a low-end public house run by her old, now retired family manservant who goes by the wonderful name of Chunks. However, there is a ladder ahead for our Fanny in the form of her real dad's dashing and handsome private male secretary, played with brio by Stewart Granger, himself destined for high office, who she first met and innocently beguiled at her father's estate. Despite the opposition of his super-snobbish mother and sister about her low and scandalous beginnings, he pursues her ardently as a happy ending again comes into view for her. That is, until they encounter in Paris the dastardly Manderstroke again...

One can easily imagine the page-turning potboiler on which it was based and director Anthony Asquith pretty much applies the same technique on the screen. There's even some social commentary on class differences with Granger's Harry Somersford even predicting that one day there will be no class system years from now, but don't go thinking that this feature is some extended Marxist tract, it's just an unpretentiously entertaining rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches story of Fanny down our alley.

I enjoyed Calvert's bright-eyed performance as the plucky title-character and Granger and Mason too in their already typecast roles as handsome gallant and pantomime villain respectively. Like I said, the film packs a lot into its 102 minutes and while you'd never mistake it for "War and Peace" , I found it to be a pleasant, undemanding piece of escapism, aimed very much at its captive working-class audience of the day.

A highly enjoyable guilty pleasure.

[MOscarbradley · 7/10 · 19 May 2022]

This Victorian melodrama has enough plot to fill several volumes and is, what you might call, 'a rum yarn'. Anthony Asquith's "Fanny By Gaslight" was based on a best-selling novel by Michael Sadleir and was a huge hit in its native Britain and it's an exemplary example of its kind. Phyllis Calvert is Fanny and let's just say what happens to her in the course of this tale would put any Dickens heroine to shame or to quote Thelma Ritter, 'all that's missing is the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end'. Stewart Granger is the young man who loves her and James Mason, the nasty brute who would like to ruin her and others in the fine cast include Wilfred Lawson, Jean Kent, Margaretta Sccott, Cathleen Nesbitt and Nora Swinburne. Given that it's basically a soap opera, Asquith handles it with considerable aplomb and the performances are first-rate. If it's a guilty pleasure, it's certainly a highly enjoyable one.

James Mason as a Cad!

[By-TorX-1 · 6/10 · 12 July 2021]

Fanny By Gaslight/Man of Evil is an enjoyable British 1940s melodrama that sees Phyllis Calvert's Fanny go through various trials before finding true love in the arms of Stewart Granger's Harry Somerford, a 'toff' who progressively scorns the archaic British class system (resisting his sister Kate's haughty stipulations that Fanny must know her social place!). Thus, the intrepid Fanny is reduced to various hardships (a bit of sewing, pulling pints, and a brief stint in a laundry) and family tragedies while constantly coming into contact with the villainous James Mason as Lord Manderstroke. James Mason is the highlight of the film, and he is an amoral and callous cad throughout, but sadly his character is only peppered throughout the drama. Hence, neither title really does the film justice as the man of evil only periodically appears and I do not ever recall a scene in which the fact that Fanny may be illuminated by gaslight is especially significant. But, it is nevertheless a nice Sunday afternoon vintage caper and James Mason is perfectly splendid, as he always was.

For me, very engrossing; main character completely sympathetic

[w-zucker57 · 9/10 · 13 September 2010]

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.

A Penny Dreadful

[jromanbaker · 3/10 · 21 February 2021]

I don't have much liking for a lot of Gainsborough films, and just for the sake of Phyllis Calvert who I do like I watched this penny dreadful ( very bad easy reading in the dark ages of the Victorian era, and perhaps the basis for many bad novels long since forgotten ), and there is the usual young innocent young girl getting a glimpse of prostitution and Can-Can dancers, and then when older gets into all sorts of melodramatic situations and meeting one dimensional people. Pointless to go into the plot, and the acting is dire thanks probably to the bad dialogue and the direction is wooden, and the music coy. I expect WW2 audiences needed this kind of rubbish to take their minds off the horrors around them. Calvert does her best, and James Mason is a very bad man ( he did this kind of role for Gainsborough and the studio counted on his capacity for good/bad performances ) and Stewart Granger is on hand to be well, let us say good. Many will get pleasure from this kind of cinema, and cheap fiction is perhaps better than no fiction at all. As someone wise said, mankind can bear only so much of reality. Margaretta Scott stands out almost transforming trash into gold. A remarkably good actor who gets my 3 vote. Why America got fussed about it is beyond belief.

An old fashioned romance...and a very good one at that.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 14 June 2019]

Fanny (Phyllis Calvert) is a lovely young lady who, through no fault of her own, is persecuted throughout the story due to her heritage. It seems that her father was an important nobleman and she didn't even know it. That is because his family annulled his marriage to a commoner....and the pregnant woman later remarried and her new husband raised Fanny as his very own. She only learns of all this after the death of her mother and step-father. She is, briefly, introduced to her biological father and they spend time together...though unfortunately not enough time. Soon, he, too, is dead and Fanny is out fending for herself. However, a lovely nobleman (Stewart Granger) falls for her and promises her a life of ease and love....but at the cost of him being disowned by his family. What is Fanny to do? After all, she loves him but won't stand in his way. And, what about the incredibly evil Lord Manderstoke (James Mason), as he and the boyfriend's family seem bent on destroying Fanny.

This film is a lovely story...very much like an old fashioned love story. This is NOT meant as an insult...such stories can be very satisfying if well written and the characters enjoyable...which they definitely are here.

The Lamp Is Low

[writers_reign · 5/10 · 4 June 2009]

Puffin Asquith was one of the finest English film directors in the mid twentieth century but he was most at home in contemporary settings, working especially fruitfully with Terence Rattigan. He was, therefore, not an ideal choice for Victorian soap opera and unfortunately it shows. One can understand the thinking at Gainsborough, they'd hit one out of the park with The Man In Grey when they'd intended only a bread-and-butter entry so they were anxious to follow it with more of the same while the iron was still hot. Accordingly they wheeled out James Mason (and promptly under-used him), Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger, with Jean Kent and Wilfrid Lawson thrown in for good measure. It was barely credibly in 1944 in the middle of a war and today there seems no excuse for it. On the other hand it's always nice to see Mason.

Great Victorian/Dickensian drama with Calvert and Mason in top form

[adrianovasconcelos · 8/10 · 28 March 2020]

I am not overly fond of Anthony Asquith as a director. I tend to find his films stilted but I have to admit that he has done a good job with FANNY BY GASLIGHT.

The script is full of Dickensian touches, notably in respect of class differences, and the pace is well controlled throughout.

I find beautiful Phyllis Calvert to have one of of her better parts in this film. Versatile James Mason unfortunately has only a small part but it is a memorable one. The scene of the duel challenge with Stewart Granger is one of the best of any British movie I have watched, and I have watched many because I am a fan of the British cinema, especially the 1935-1970 period.

Finally, the exceedingly beautiful B&W photography, exquisite beyond words.

Anyone who enjoys Dickensian drama MUST see FANNY BY GASLIGHT. 8/10

Uncensored delight

[lor_ · 4 April 2024]

I greatly enjoy the Gainsborough films, especially those "bodice rippers", and with Mason as such a terrific heavy, making every moment of his limited screen time count, this is most enjoyable escapism.

Of course it is Phyllis Calvert as Fanny who dominates the film, ably supported by a well-chosen supporting cast. I much regret that my favorite contemporary British director, Ken Russell, was never able to realize his last major project -a new version of "Moll Flanders", but seeing this 1944 costume picture some 80 years after courtesy of YouTube makes up for it thanks to a very fine British print.

Strange title

[AAdaSC · 5/10 · 20 December 2016]

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.

Doesn't age well? I beg to differ.

[Irie212 · 8/10 · 3 April 2024]

This is a response to the reviewers who seem to want movies to be up to date, a reaction almost as inane as the "It was good for its time" insult. Every art form reflects its era. That is an axiom, not a weakness. "Fanny by Gaslight" very much reflects the morals and class system of Victorian England, but also explores timeless themes: loyalty, greed, forgiveness, and love both romantic and familial.

Ironically, the viewers who air such views suffer from the very thing they accuse the movie of: being stuck in their own era. Perfect example, the reviewer who called this movie "stilted and rather tame." If you watch it on its terms, it is neither. Another began the review, "This is a story that doesn't age well," then proceeded to praise the presentation of the protagonist: "With every revelation, she has to make a choice about whether to live her life honestly or prudently." That is a timeless theme.

"Fanny by Gaslight" is admirable as cinema as well: finely paced and structured by director Anthony Asquith; beautifully shot by Arthur Crabtree (a Hitchcock protégée); and with sensitive portrayals by all the actors, even minor roles.

Fanny by Gaslight

[Prismark10 · 5/10 · 19 August 2022]

Fanny by Gaslight was a ribald novel. This film adaptation was racy for its time.

Now it looks stilted and rather tame.

Fanny had a charmed life until her father is killed in a brawl with the dastardly Lord Manderstroke (James Mason.)

It turns out that her father was not her real father and he ran a brothel.

Fanny now in reduced circumstances works as a maid but to her real father, a member of the government.

She discovers that his wife, her stepmother is cheating on him. She is carrying on with lecherous Lord Manderstroke who also has a lusty eye for Fanny.

After the suicide of her real father. Her circumstances are even more reduced, especially after her failed relationship with Henry Somerford (Stewart Granger) the parliamentary secretary to her late father.

The movie from the then noted Gainsborough studios is really about the up and down life of Fanny and how she has to deal with social conventions of the time and class divide.

That comes to the fore when Fanny deals with Henry's sister. The story is almost Dickensian but racier as Fanny has spent time in and around brothels over the years.

overblown Gainsborough gloop

[didi-5 · 6 July 2003]

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.

doesn't age well

[killercharm · 5/10 · 11 March 2022]

This is a story that doesn't age well. The whole movie doesn't age well until the last scene wherein it's all worth it. A young lady loses her safe home and all its illusions when her father dies. She finds out fundamental truths were lies and still knows how and who to trust. When she finds out her true heritage is being brought up by the money made from a dance hall she splits town under her mother's behest, right before her mum dies. Once in her new digs she finds out a new truth was a lie, but this time it's for the better. With every revelation she has to make a choice about whether to live her life honestly or prudently.