A scene from Gaslight 1944
Cameron

Your husband and Sergis Bauer are one and the same person. And this letter from Sergis Bauer to Alice Alquist was written two days before her murder.

Paula

But he said there wasn't any letter. He said I was going out of my mind.

Cameron

You're not going out of your mind. You're slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.

Paula

But why? WHY?

Cameron

Perhaps because you found this letter and know too much. [He looks up] Or because then he would have control of your property, of this house, and could search in the open instead of the dark like this.

Paula

Why search? What is there to search for?

Cameron

For the things for which Alice Alquist was murdered. Her jewels.

Paula

But I have her jewels.

Cameron

Not the jewels you didn't know she had. Famous jewels, jewels for which he was searching that night. When he was frightened away by hearing someone come down the stairs. Someone he never saw. A little girl.

Paula

Me. Me. But he - if he was here that night, but he never - he never knew her. You're wrong...You're making a mistake. I know him. He's my husband. I've lived in the same house with him. You're talking about the man I'm married to.

Cameron

Mrs. Anton. There's not a detail of the Alquist case that I don't know and unless I'm more mistaken than I've ever been in my life, the man called Sergis Bauer has a wife living in Prague now. So you see, Mrs. Anton, he must have planned the whole thing step by step from that night.

Paula

Oh, if that were true, then from the beginning there would have been nothing. Nothing real from the beginning.

Cameron

I'm sorry to take everything away from you like this, but you must believe me. Your whole life depends on what you're going to do now, nothing less than your whole life. Don't you see the way everything fits in?

In this scene

More from Gaslight

Gaslight (1944) poster
Gaslight 1944 · 15 quotes · 3 characters All Gaslight quotes →
All Gaslight quotes →