The film that killed its star, Hangover Square is an adaptation of Patrick Wilson’s most popular novel, a moody noir set in gaslit, foggy London and with a psychoanalytical element that marks it out as a beast lumbering out of the 1940s.
There’s a lot to like here but the first thing to grab the attention is the score by Bernard Herrmann, which sets the mood with its jangling tangle of unresolved chords, followed by a giddy, swooping camera swinging us straight into the action – a man being killed done from the killer’s point of view.
The killer is George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar), a classical composer with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities, in other words) who, in a fugue state is liable to do anything. These moods come upon George rarely and once they pass he has no memory of what he’s done. For the majority of the time George is an affable, studious sort of chap with the love of good woman, Barbara (Faye Marlowe), the respect of his peers and with a concerto in the works that is going to make his name.
George doesn’t need a psychological disorder to complicate his life. That comes in the form of Netta (Linda Darnell), a music hall singer who gets her hooks in and encourages him to write cheap tunes for her, rather than follow his true calling and his erstwhile muse, Barbara.
This is film noir and Netta is the classic femme fatale, a chiselling gold-digger who’s playing George, finds him a bore and is instead secretly trysting with handsome, square jawed theatrical impresario Eddie Carstairs (Glenn Langan).
She’ll eventually end up at the wrong end of one of George’s episodes, but in reality there’s no need in this film for the dissociative identity angle. The plot would run along smoothly with good old-fashioned jealousy as a motivation. But this faddish plot wrinkle does let director John Brahm and DP Joseph LaShelle ring variations on their elegant cameras and rich black-and-white lighting with gauzy subjective drop-ins indicating flashbacks and the “out of body” moments George suffers.
It’s a short film, at 77 minutes, but it is satisfyingly full, thanks to those atmospheric visuals, Herrmann’s dense and dark score, some neatly choreographed set pieces and the repeated thematic juxtaposition of high and low. Conductor’s daughter Barbara and music-hall singer Netta; the concerto and the popular tune; life indoors on this fine square and life outdoors, where George often chats with a nightwatchman; the suave composer and the brutal killer. Class looms large.
Also looming large is Cregar himself, a big man who reckoned he could be a leading man if he only lost some weight. After the success of The Lodger the year before – a Hitchcock remake that actually worked – Cregar seized his moment and went on a crash diet, using amphetamines to help him shed the pounds. To accommodate him the film was shot chronologically to keep in sync with George’s weight loss.
Or that’s the story. To these eyes there is no obvious change in Cregar’s appearance, so I’m not sure what that’s all about, but either way Cregar was dead within weeks of production wrapping, his life cut short aged 30 from complications arising from the over-eager use of speed.
What might have been. This was meant to be the first of a run of projects involving several players from The Lodger – director John Brahm, writer Barré Lyndon, producer Robert Bassler and co-star George Sanders (who plays a cool Scotland Yard shrink).
At least Cregar goes out on a high, in a particularly melodramatic finale set in a concert hall where George is determined to play his concerto, in spite of the fact that the building is burning down around him. What a way to go.
Hangover Square – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
