Hangover Square (John Brahm, 1945)

[FrauBlucher]

Hangover Square was on Noir Alley several weeks back. I DVR'd it and just watched it. I've never seen it. Well, this jumps into the upper echelon of noirs for me. It very much has that Scarlet Street feel. The femme fatale takes wicked advantage of the weak minded yet very talented man. The final scene is brilliant. Loved Laird Cregar, his first starring roll. It showed his potential, it's a shame his life was cut short.

Anyone else feel the same?

[Roscoe]

I too watched HANGOVER SQUARE recently, DVR'd from the TCM Noir Alley showing, and was very taken with it. How have I not seen this until now? Very handsomely done on all counts. And that score, my God.

[FrauBlucher]

For those who didn't see the Noir Alley, Eddie Muller said Bernard Hermann had a very big roll in the sound production from beginning of filming to end, which was not the case in those days

[bottlesofsmoke]

I love Hangover Square, a peak of using lighting, camera angles, and music to suggest the mental instability of a character.
it’s a truly mad movie with some virtuoso moments, like the opening long tracking shot up to the window, followed by what I assume is the first subjective-camera murder in a movie. And as you mentioned, the ending with camera flying around the burning room to Bernard Herrmann’s concerto, which itself suggests Bone’s madness. And the Guy Fawkes night scene, which is one of the most unhinged scenes in a classic Hollywood and one that Brahm would reuse almost verbatim, though not nearly as effectively, a few years later in The Mad Magician. the

Linda Darnell’s character is one of the more wanton femme fatales of the 40s, fitting right into Brahm’s theme of female characters who destroy men, though she acts more out of greed than the elaborate psychological compulsion his other female characters do: Anne Baxter manipulative ornithophobiac in Guest in the House, the women that Cregar’s Slade hates in The Lodger (“lovely women who drag men down”), Laraine Day’s kleptomaniac in The Locket, Ava Gardner’s amnesiac in Singapore, and Nancy Guild’s haphephobiac in The Brasher Doubloon. And in his two Cregar films it is the man who compulsively destroys women. Brahm’s love-hate relationship with the women in his films ("You wouldn't think that anyone could hate a thing and love it too” as Slade puts it) and the psychological elements of his femme fatales really do make him among the most 1940s of noir directors.

Hangover Square is really a companion piece to The Lodger from the year prior, with Brahm, George Sanders, writer Barre Lyndon and producer Robert Bassler returning. The novel that Hangover Square is based on really has very little to do with the movie they made out of it; the setting, political themes (its set pre-WWII), characters, and most of the plot were changed to make it a close follow up to The Lodger. One of those odd cases where the novel and film are nothing alike but both are good, the original story (by Gaslight author Patrick Hamilton) is really good and deserves a faithful adaptation of its own.

Laird Cregar was truly a loss, he was great playing these creeps and killers, not just in the two Brahm films but also in I Wake Up Screaming as the detective with the shrine in his apartment and This Gun for Hire, where he acts the big shot but melts to a quivering puddle when threatened with violence. He could also play straight roles (he very entertaining in Blood and Sand) and classy comedy, as the devil in Heaven Can Wait.

Anyways, Hangover Square is a great movie and Brahm a fascinating figure, even if he didn’t always make great films.

[moonboot]

I've not seen the film, but the book, by Patrick Hamilton, is superb, I highly recommend it. I'm always uncomfortable about seeing a film adaptation of books that I love, they always seem to disappoint, but I might give this one a go.

[FrauBlucher]

moonboot, here is Muller on TCM's Noir Alley about the film... INTRO and OUTRO... Hopefully this will help you to give it a go.

[bottlesofsmoke]

I've not seen the film, but the book, by Patrick Hamilton, is superb, I highly recommend it. I'm always uncomfortable about seeing a film adaptation of books that I love, they always seem to disappoint, but I might give this one a go.

Just keep in mind that the film is very different than the novel, it’s a still a good movie but just tangentially related to the book, which I agree is superb and dying for a faithful adaptation.