1945 - HANGOVER SQUARE, efficent film noir

The old mad killer driven insane by voices in his head is given the 20th Century Fox treatment.  Hangover Square features Laird Cregar as a composer trying to finish his concerto before he goes completely "nuts".

 Laird Cregar went on a diet for this film.  He usually played corpulent bad guys but he got himself in shape to perform love scenes with Linda Darnell who plays a conniving music hall singer exploiting Cregar for his talent.  George Sanders is his usual reliable self playing a doctor trying to figure out what is going through Cregar's head.  He's an early version of Lt Colombo I guess.

 

For a modest film Fox had a lot of behind the camera talent involved.  The excellent black and white photography was by Joseph LaShelle who had filmed Laura and Marty to name just a few.  Probably the most important contribution was from the composer Bernard Herrmann.  Herrmann wrote what is now known as the "Concerto Macabre for Piano and Orchestra".  The  Concerto is performed at the end of the film with the director John Brahm filming the scene with all the stops pulled out.

 

Written by Barré Lyndon, the running time is 78 minutes.

1945 - HANGOVER SQUARE, don't mess with a crazy musician

This is a well made thriller with lots of atmosphere.  The director John Brahm, the cinematographer Joseph LaShelle and the composer Bernard Herrmann were really on top of their game in this film. 

Hangover Square has a great cast.  Perennial film villain Laird Cregar plays well another film villain,  a crazy composer who kills people when he experiences "blackouts."  Linda Darnell is the trampy dance hall singer who uses Cregar to write songs for her so she can advance her career, she's just asking for it.  George Sanders is a doctor who specializes in "crimes of the mind."

Another example of Darryl F Zanuck's film smarts, the novel Hangover Square was originally set in the late 1930's.  Zanuck ordered the film set in the early 1900's so he could reuse the sets from a previous film.  That decision adds to the rich Gothic atmosphere of the film.

The composer Bernard Herrmann wrote the concerto that concludes the film which he has cleverly interspersed throughout the film.  Everything leads up to the concerto, where the direction, photography and music combine for a real bravura conclusion to the film. 

Hangover Square is the acknowledged inspiration for Steven Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.

77 minutes.