First, he’s all kindness, blaming her alleged lapses on fatigue. Gregory escalates the mental abuse by insisting she’s forgetful. Denied the critical sanity check provided by outside voices, Paula lives increasingly in her own mind and in the version of the truth Gregory gives her. Upon return to London, Gregory isolates Paula, first playing on her romanticism (“No visitors, dear–let’s continue our honeymoon”), then gradually by insisting to callers and the household staff madame is too ill to receive guests. Guess who happens to own such a property? Paula resists returning home, the site of her aunt’s murder, but she decides to give Gregory his dream. Paula wants to live in Paris, but Gregory longs to live in a townhouse on a London square. Guess who meets her at the station? We know right away this guy is trouble, so the suspense begins by prompting the question, Will Paula get wise before it’s too late?
It’s so intense she wants a break, and runs off to Italy to think things through. Paula quits her voice training because she doesn’t have the heart for it she’s absorbed by a whirlwind romance with Gregory (Charles Boyer). Paula (Ingrid Bergman) is a young classical singer haunted by the murder of her aunt Alice Alquist, also a famous classical singer. This film (and the play by Patrick Hamilton on which it’s based) is of course the origin of the term “gaslighting,” a form of mental abuse in which the perpetrator lies baldly and remorselessly in order to cause the victim to question his or her own reality.
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