#623: Hangover Square
Atmospheric Edwardian noir
Initial release: February 7, 1945
Director: John Brahm
We often think of film noir, at least in its classic form, to be a mid-century thing; while it has roots in the German expressionism of the 1920s and gangster films of the 1930s, film noir as a genre was always unquestionably a picture of wartime and post-war cynicism. Sometimes, though, these films wind the clock back forty, or fifty, or seventy years and we get something set in the Victorian era, or the Edwardian era. It’s not too far-fetched an idea — after all, the line between film noir and gothic horror is thin indeed (take a look at some of the treatments of Jack the Ripper!) While most noir aficionados will likely think of Gaslight (usually the 1944 one) when discussing gaslamp noir, it’s John Brahm’s Hangover Square that’s probably the pinnacle of the format.
(As an aside: there are a few examples of the genre that go even further back: The Tall Target, Black Magic, Reign of Terror.)
Ironically enough, the book that Hangover Square is based on is a wartime chiller, set in 1939 on the eve of the Big Two. 20th Century Fox wanted to capitalize on the success of 1944’s The Lodger (yet another Ripper-inspired gaslamp noir) and moved the setting back to the turn of the century — mid- to late 1903, in fact. (Why 1903? It’s not clear.) While the core premise is the same — the protagonist is prone to periods of a murderous dissociative state — the film plays out rather differently. Rather than being an alcoholic, our hero — George Bone — is a renowned composer in London, who has a tendency to have dissociative episodes when exposed to loud noises under stress. The film makes it quite clear that he’s the murderer the cops are after pretty much from the jump, as we open to a first-person view of him murdering a Jewish shopkeeper and throwing a gas lantern on the body before the camera cuts to George himself, who then wanders in a daze down the street, eventually coming back to himself by the time he arrives home.
When news of the murder and arson break out, he of course wonders if he might be the cause, and goes to see Middleton, a doctor friend at Scotland Yard, who ultimately clears him if for no reason other than lack of evidence. Things are fine, until George meets Netta, a sleazy pub singer who manipulates George for fame and fortune, much to the consternation of George’s existing girlfriend Barbara. As George’s romantic life falls down around his ears while he’s also trying to build his career, he suffers more episodes, ultimately murdering Netta and throwing her corpse unnoticed onto a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night. In a fantastically bleak ending, it’s Middleton who connects the dots, and when he confronts George the night of the latter’s big concerto, George winds up burning the whole place down and finishing his concerto as the building collapses around him.
Music is a big part of the film, with the score composed by Bernard Hermann (you might know him for Psycho’s mind-bending murder strings.) Much of the film simply wouldn’t work without it — Netta is a singer and much of her behavior is trying to get George to write music for her. The way the ending dialed down the sound and played up the music as people fled the building and George continued to play was nothing short of genius.
Hangover Square is an interesting film. It’s one that reveals to us the murderer from the start, and while its primary device — the hero hears too much noise when he’s having a bad day and winds up dissociating, with no memory of his actions after — doesn’t hold up to scrutiny in today’s improved understanding of how mental illness and dissociation works, it still makes for good drama as George tries to balance his need for success with his own concerns about what he might do the next time he blacks out.
(And anyway I get it — there is something to be said for how being overstimulated changes your mood. I don’t think it makes you black out and kill people, but still.)
Like most film noirs, this one is almost entirely carried by its production values. The streets of a rapidly-modernizing Edwardian London are gloomy and dark, populated by street urchins and upright businessmen. Fog chases George into Netta’s apartment building; we can see the progress of the roadwork going on by George’s flat throughout the film. We can also see George losing weight as time goes by; this was, in fact, done deliberately by the short-lived, yet larger-than-life Laird Cregar, who underwent an ill-advised weight-loss regime during his filming of The Lodger that included use of amphetamines, which ultimately killed him in late 1944, making Hangover Square his last film.
It’s a bittersweet end, and George’s death — setting himself on fire in the name of his art — feels like a metaphor for Cregar himself.
