After the death of her aunt, who was a world-famous opera singer, Paula Alquist travels to Italy to study singing and follow in her footsteps. Soon, she is enchanted by Gregory Anton. After their marriage, the couple arrive at the same Victorian house in London where Paula’s aunt was murdered. Then, mysterious things start to happen: paintings suddenly disappear, ghostly footsteps can be heard in the night, and the gaslights shine dimmer, then brighter. On the verge of losing her sanity, Paula begins to question herself.

In the late 1930s, classic Hollywood director George Cukor (1899–1983) took Ingrid Bergman under his wing as she had just arrived from Sweden. Wanting to make a film based on Patrick Hamilton’s gothic play, producers at MGM objected to Bergman’s healthy Swedish looks and height – they needed a more fragile beauty. “What if we do have a powerful woman? It will be twice as interesting to see whether she will be able to fight back, whether he will be able to really ruin her, or break her,” Cukor countered. Her performance as Paula won Bergman her first Best Actress Oscar, and the title of this film noir is now used as a term in psychology: “gaslighting” is a manipulative act whereby a person causes another to question their own memory, perception of reality and reason.