Hangover Square (1945)

Directed by John Brahm; produced by Robert Bassler

George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar) is a young and promising composer in 1903 London. One night, a decision to unwind at a ‘smoking concert’ leads to an infatuation with Netta Longdon (Linda Darnell), a moderately talented singer of dubious morals. His anguished relationship with the woman accentuates his growing problem with black-outs, a series of psychotic breaks, his actions during which he can’t recall, and which are becoming more violent. His determination to have Netta, as well as professional success, push Bone to the edge of sanity.

Hangover Square is derived from the novel of the same name, but with substantial changes to the story and characters. The time period is re-set, Bone is made a musician and, bizarrely, the title is made a real address. In the book, it refers more to a state of mind, and reflects Bone’s alcoholism (with which he is not afflicted in the film), and is a word-play on Hanover Square, a genuine London address. I can’t think of any town or city in the English-speaking world that would willingly possess a location actually called Hangover Square.

In any case, though the story is greatly altered, it is a good one, if not original: Bone’s relationship with Netta has elements of other narratives such as Of Human Bondage, while his murderous black-outs have been used in half a dozen thrillers. But they are well-utilised here, and lead more or less reasonably to their conclusion. Hangover Square is not a horror movie, not even quite a thriller, though it has tension. It is a psychological drama with some affecting scenes. That in which a corpse is disposed of is dreadful and ironic, and the climax is exciting and highly dramatic.

The script is adequate. The characters, especially Bone’s, are well-written and believable. Details are at times incredible. For instance, it is unlikely that a knighted conductor of music (Alan Napier) and a struggling composer would live in the same square, even if the latter inhabits just a modest basement suite, and even more doubtful that a music-hall performer would also live in there. And we don’t learn the motive for the initial murder.

What makes the movie are the actors and the direction, with able assistance from the musical score. Laird Cregar had a remarkable cinematic career – remarkable and regrettably short – appearing in sixteen films (the first two uncredited) in five years. He almost always portrayed men older than himself (in I Wake Up Screaming, he plays a police inspector with fifteen years experience; Cregar was twenty-seven at the time). Tired of taking character and villain roles, he determined to lose pounds to obtain better leading parts, and dropped a great weight in a short time. This resulted in a heart attack which killed him at the age of thirty-one, just months before Hangover Square was released.

Cregar’s performance in Hangover Square may be his best (it’s hard to choose from a selection of excellent acts). He imbues Bone with a decency and frailty that may be seen in most people. It is not without sympathy that the audience sees his descent into degradation and his attempts to salvage both his dignity and his career. This was his second starring role, after 1944’s The Lodger, and could have given him the more central, leading parts for which he died.

Darnell is also very good as the woman who is, as our ancestors might have said, no better than she ought to be. There are flashes of humanity to be viewed at certain moments, but they pass, and there is no clue in the story as to what made her personality the selfish one it is. That this is the case is no fault of the actress.

George Sanders appears as a ‘Scotland Yard doctor’ – a psychiatrist -  working with Cregar for the third time. (I reviewed their movie The Black Swan not long ago); his brother Tom Conway also played the part of a psychiatrist, in Cat People, reviewed immediately prior to this film. (Alan Napier, Sir Henry Chapman in Hangover Square, was also in Cat People. One wonders just how small the cinematic world of the 1940s was.) Sanders gets to be rather more heroic than in most of his roles.

The direction is impressive. There are large-scale shots that give the feeling of expansiveness to what otherwise could be a stage-drama, and the concert scene features a sequence in which the view starts with the concert’s audience, moves across them, around the musicians and back to Bone at the piano; this must have been one of the earliest uses of a swinging boom-camera. And the climax is one to remember.

Finally, the musical score by Bernard Herrmann must be mentioned. It sets the mood at the very beginning with its heavy discordance, but is later incorporated into the movie as the concerto on which Bone has been labouring. The concert scene is lengthier than most musical pieces in movies (reflecting the real length of many such works) but is not boring, thanks to the direction and the music itself. That the score is a motif for Bone’s psychological condition is important, and profitably brings what is often a background element of cinema to the fore.

Hangover Square did not go where I thought it would and, due to a number of its components, is an improbably successful blend of human drama, crime story and classical tragedy.