"Fanny by Gaslight"

[Tez]

Can anyone tell me what this saying actually means and what the origins of it are? Apparanlty it comes from England?

[Drewhound]

I don't think it means anything, it was the name of a film

[Mortartube]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036814/ A bit more at this link.

[Maude]

Fanny by Gaslight is an English term for terror in suspense. The film has a scene where the murdering villain is known by poor Fanny to be in the bedroom above her. The villain's boot drops loudly on the floor, and we all wait for the relief of hearing the second boot drop and the implied knowledge that the villain has gone to bed so Fanny's escape is possible. It never drops!!!

[Sylday]

"Fanny by Gaslight" was a 1940 novel by Michael Sadleir before it was a film; it may also have been a play. Sadleir was a great lover of Victorian melodramas and that era generally. In devising the title he was possibly thinking of a typical, Victorian painted portrait of a woman with a title such as "Charlotte by candlelight".

[msmode]

I haven't seen the film. But I thought the point of it was that someone was trying to make Fanny believe she was mad, by, for example, dimming the gas lights. The term 'to gaslight' someone means to make them believe themselves to be going insane.

[smudge]

Sounds like a lady of the night to me!

[jno]

No, msmode, that's just Gaslight (filmed in Britain with Diana Wynyard, then in Hollywood with Ingrid Bergman - they allegedly tried and failed to suppress all copies of the British version) - Fanny by Gaslight's a different film.