Hangover Square (1945)
Andrew's been screening a lot of Marx Bros. movies this week, and yesterday, while A Night in Casablanca was running, I began looking up some of the supporting cast and fell down a rabbit hole of character actors that's had me on a mini Laird Cregar binge. This morning I watched Hangover Square (1945), and have so far processed the following:
1. In most Hollywood movies, writing popular songs for a sexy music-hall performer would be a step in the right direction for a classical composer -- she'd be bringing new blood to his art and dragging him away from his stuffy conservatory background and fiancee. This is not that type of movie, so Netta (Linda Darnell) actually despises George and is just using him. Actually watching the scenes of them working on a song together sort of undercuts this narrative, however -- they seem happy and engaged; in George's case, more so than in any of the scenes where he's working alone on his concerto. Yet another movie could probably have been made about how sometimes people are great creative partners but lousy romantic partners. This is not that type of movie either.
2. There's really a whole subgenre of Victorian/Edwardian noir, which doesn't seem to be much written about. This movie, The Lodger (1944), and The Suspect (1944) are all examples.
3. Except Hangover Square is arguably also a werewolf movie. Laird Cregar even has the same sort of hulking sadness as Lon Chaney Jr. in this picture; some of it perhaps due to being physically messed-up from amphetamines, crash dieting and surgery. Like his character, composer George Harvey Bone, he put his art before his own life. Unlike Bone, he seems to have only been fatal to himself; but it's still a tragedy.
4. George Sanders (Inspector Middleton) plays a much more sympathetic detective here than he does in The Lodger. Apparently he hated the line he was to have delivered, as Bone dies playing his final concerto in a burning building: "He's better off this way." After much arguing, he got it toned down very slightly to "It's better this way."
1. In most Hollywood movies, writing popular songs for a sexy music-hall performer would be a step in the right direction for a classical composer -- she'd be bringing new blood to his art and dragging him away from his stuffy conservatory background and fiancee. This is not that type of movie, so Netta (Linda Darnell) actually despises George and is just using him. Actually watching the scenes of them working on a song together sort of undercuts this narrative, however -- they seem happy and engaged; in George's case, more so than in any of the scenes where he's working alone on his concerto. Yet another movie could probably have been made about how sometimes people are great creative partners but lousy romantic partners. This is not that type of movie either.
2. There's really a whole subgenre of Victorian/Edwardian noir, which doesn't seem to be much written about. This movie, The Lodger (1944), and The Suspect (1944) are all examples.
3. Except Hangover Square is arguably also a werewolf movie. Laird Cregar even has the same sort of hulking sadness as Lon Chaney Jr. in this picture; some of it perhaps due to being physically messed-up from amphetamines, crash dieting and surgery. Like his character, composer George Harvey Bone, he put his art before his own life. Unlike Bone, he seems to have only been fatal to himself; but it's still a tragedy.
4. George Sanders (Inspector Middleton) plays a much more sympathetic detective here than he does in The Lodger. Apparently he hated the line he was to have delivered, as Bone dies playing his final concerto in a burning building: "He's better off this way." After much arguing, he got it toned down very slightly to "It's better this way."