Hangover Square (1945)

Subject to lengthy spells in which he cannot recall his actions, an overworked London composer begins to question whether he is committing murders during his blackouts in this stylish thriller starring Laird Cregar in his final big screen performance before his untimely death. Cregar is excellent throughout, especially towards the end as he gradually becomes more and more unhinged, and his fiery final scene is hard to forget. The film has some pacing problems though with around half the movie's duration passing between the first and second murders/deaths. While the events during this lengthy interim provide some extra character motivation, is never particularly interesting to watch small time nightclub singer Linda Darnell constantly toy with the (unbelievably) gullible Cregar's emotions. The second half of the movie is admittedly pretty solid though and Bernard Herrmann's atmospheric music score is excellent throughout, nicely coinciding with the heightened sound effects that indicate that Cregar is about to black out. Blurry closeups of Cregar's wide open eyes as he begins to blackout works surprisingly well too (cinematographer Joseph LaShelle had just come off an Oscar win for his luscious lensing of 'Laura' at the time). It is debatable how psychologically sound the story is here, however, it nevertheless makes for an interesting look at the possible effects of elevated stress on an individual, and if nothing else, the film features the most morbid Guy Fawkes celebration scene ever committed to celluloid.

and I think Mr. composer actually played the music himself! "Hangover Square" kept me well occupied today for about half the time that the plumbers were here, making big drama about a few repairs, making a career of it as Tura Satana says in Faster Pussycat. It's a marvelous cinematic sensation about a classical composer whose modernism music is by Berhard Hermann lots of tritones and rather nice it is as is this nice girl - kind of a cross between Laura Linney and Cookie Mueller - whose sole ambition is how to help her man's career and whose father is a conductor and who's pretty much managed to swing a commission for a new concerto for the piano he will play. Liberace this man is not. The Actor who looks to have been born to play Oscar Wilde (and it says "on the internet" that he forced Hollywood to notice him by staging a 1 man show about Oscar), Laird Cregar evidently he died trying to transform himself into "a beautiful man" at 33 his dieting for this film killed him it says here another source told me that he died as a result of plastic surgery. he actually looked better at 300 lbs. judging by the photos I've found on the internet. Anyway our beastly Beethoven has been blacking out from overwork and someone always seems to die a violent death during these blackouts. a hussy of the worst kind - an actress - who's about the most heinous unmarried hussy without a hymen who ever was, the most tawdry tart since Marlene in "The Devil is a Woman" gets her claws into him & starts making him write pop songs. this takes place in ... the teens? gas lamp/gaslight time 20th century I think. what triggers his quite apparently murderous blackouts? they occur when he hears a jangling "discordant sound" he strangles a Jew, tries to strangle a cat and even the nice girl who fortunately doesn't notice who it is for aside from her man she only has eyes for her piano. indeed perhaps the piano is her lover. she wraps herself around it! it's quite something historical when he finally gets rid of the hussy using the knotted garroting technique for it's guy Fawkes holiday and he is able to get rid of the corpse by putting her body on this pyre of guy Fawkes effigies just before it's torched foreshadowing more fiery flights in the near future but none's the wiser except eventually sadly he doesn't kill killjoy George sander who of all things plays the "good guy" a doctor who insists on some revelations just before he's about to go out to take the stage to premiere his concerto! the Dr (the ass!) worries that the music will trigger an episode. finally .... Our man, Maestro Bone, collapses because he's being stalked by Scotland yard during right his concert during the Adagio and while he agrees to relinquish the solo part which is taken over by the nice miss (linney/mueller) he doesn't want to leave the building as anyone there would, in fact, he wants at least to hear his concerto, even though you can barely hear the piano part once the delicate little miss takes over. naturally he starts a fire to occupy his pursuers as a later result of which soon enough chaos erupts in the concert hall the musicians and audience begin pouring out the exits along with smoke but the composer seizes a figurine or bust I should say a figurine but a large one, about as menacing a figurine as is to be found decorating. a strange weapon indeed but in his diabolical and talented hands the figurine as "played" by Mr. Cregar and somehow manages to force most of the public back into the concert arena! the nice woman can't drag him away from the Steinway and George sander grabs her and drags her away, saving Laura Linney/Cookie Mueller at least. as he begins playing everyone else runs right out again, as who would not! talk about goetterdaemmerung! leaving us with a fiery conclusion of both concerto and career. the piano concerto is rather nice. . .. oh and the actor seems to be playing the music, which demonstrates you don't need 150000 notes/minute a concerto to make. . . additions:I was very surprised and pleased that Hollywood acknowledged the existence of the kind of music Mr. Bone produced, even if it was in connection with a dark character. Even if he killed someone, I beg to differ with the biographical essay for LC which indicates that the character he played in HS is "despicable". That is hardly the case!

Character actor Laird Cregar received his first starring role in this exceptionally loose adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's novel about a mild-mannered composer with a latent homicidal streak. In gas-lit London (via Hollywood), Cregar falls hard for Linda Darnell, playing a greedy chanteuse who uses the pianist for his songwriting talents; little does she know, he also harbors a 'Mr. Hyde'-like tendency to go off the beam whenever he hears loud, obtrusive noises. Cregar, who has the hulking frame of a Boris Karloff and the smudgy, pudgy face of a Lee J. Cobb, doesn't deliver a performance with multi-dimensions--but then, the picture itself is rather cut-and-dry. Without cinematographer Joseph LaShelle's swooping camera movements and Bernard Herrmann's scintillating score, the movie wouldn't be much more than another Jack the Ripper variation. A few stand-out moments (such as a bonfire sequence which recalls the German Expressionists, and the frenzied finale which must be seen to be believed) do cause the film to linger in the memory. Cregar died in real-life before the picture was even released; he fills the bill without possessing any actual charisma or evidence of an uncanny grasp of verisimilitude. **1/2 from ****

20th Century Fox excelled at costume drama. Surprisingly, this feverishly baroque melodrama may well be the apex. And what a beautifully mounted movie it is, with its sumptuous recreation of turn-of-the-century London, from well-appointed drawingrooms to rain-slickened cobblestones. And who better to frame the rococo sets than the much underrated director John Brahm. Note the exquisite dining table with Darnell and Cregar, photographed through glittering chandeliers, suggesting a dream-come-true for the emotionally repressed composer. In fact, the visual detail from one camera set-up to the next seldom falters, a genuine triumph of collaborative artistry.Sure, the story is not exactly Citizen Kane. Too bad that with his finely tuned ear, wacky composer George Harvey Bone (Cregar) tends to blackout and lose control whenever jangly noise interrupts his creative reverie. We know because his eyes bulge, his nostrils flare, and the features contort into a grotesque mask, thanks to the director's extreme close-ups. All in all, Cregar is excellent as the epicene Jekyll and the madman Hyde. Couple that with the deliciously trollopy Linda Darnell and it's a real odd couple as she works the poor guy for her own selfish ends. But then she doesn't know she's playing with fire.Speaking of flames and running amok, what a great "twilight of the gods" finale, a real tribute to the special effects department. So there he sits deliriously unaware, banging out his concerto masterpiece, a perfect example of music to go mad by and die by. Then too, how about that tower of kindling for the Guy Fawkes Day celebration. I never thought anything so inanimate could look so menacingly evil. But it does.Anyhow, the treatment may be a lot more artistic than the plot deserves, but the result is still a whole heck of a lot fun.