Gaslight

LORELAI: Hey – [looks at Sookie’s watch] Aw! No! I’ve got to go home.
SOOKIE: Why? What are you doing?
LORELAI: I have to change, and go to tea with Gran and the cast of Gaslight.

Gaslight is a 1944 mystery thriller film directed by George Cukor, and adapted from the successful 1938 play Gas Light by British dramatist Patrick Hamilton.

Set mostly in Edwardian London, the film is about a woman named Paula (Ingrid Bergman) whose husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) tries to convince her that she is going insane as part of a fiendish criminal scheme: one of his methods is to contintually turn down the gas lighting in the house and tell her that only she can see it flickering.

Because of the film, the term gaslighting now refers to a form of psychological abuse where the abuser gradually manipulates the victim into doubting their own sanity, thus making them more dependent on the abuser. Lorelai is saying that’s exactly what her mother is doing to her.

Gaslight was the #13 film of 1944 and well-received by critics. It won two Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Ingrid Bergman.

According to the town clock they walk past, it is around 11.35 am when Lorelai and Sookie leave the flower shop. Lorelai seems to need an inordinate amount of time to get changed so she can be in Hartford for afternoon tea, which is usually somewhere between 4 and 6 pm.