Sickle the Ivories
Hangover Square (1945)
directed by John Brahm
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I tend to think of studio-era Hollywood adaptations as improvements upon slight and formulaic source material. Plays for sure, but novels, too. Even Raymond Chandler might know his way around a setup, but nothing on paper beats that actress (the actress, not the character) in the antiquarian bookstore in The Big Sleep. I’m kidding, kind of. It isn’t nearly so tidy as that, but given the right rainy day, I’ll always take the motion picture. I count on movies, not books, when I’m blue.
In this particular case, however, Hangover Square isn’t even an adaptation – not really – so little does it say about drinking or loneliness. But it would be wrong to dismiss it outright. It’s a horror movie, is all, and deserves credit for its original scares. The first is the use of Guy Fawkes Day as the cover-up for a murder. Crowds gather to build a bonfire, and George Harvey Bone hauls the body of his victim up a ladder, then heaps the woman – masked – grotesquely atop the pile. Her pretty, broken body goes up in an instant, the fire so hot that the public square around it clears.
Bone later kills himself inside a similarly spectacular immolation, but this time he’s accompanied by a group of musicians who gather for a performance at the home of a wealthy patron. Bernard Herrmann composed the score for Hangover Square, and as far as I know, this is the only instance in movies in which the orchestra that provides the music that brings the film to a climax actually participates in the scene. The music is meant to give us some insight into the frenzied state of Bone’s mind, but he can hear it as well as we can, since the men who play the tune surround him and the composition belongs, ostensibly, to Bone.
directed by John Brahm
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I tend to think of studio-era Hollywood adaptations as improvements upon slight and formulaic source material. Plays for sure, but novels, too. Even Raymond Chandler might know his way around a setup, but nothing on paper beats that actress (the actress, not the character) in the antiquarian bookstore in The Big Sleep. I’m kidding, kind of. It isn’t nearly so tidy as that, but given the right rainy day, I’ll always take the motion picture. I count on movies, not books, when I’m blue.
In this particular case, however, Hangover Square isn’t even an adaptation – not really – so little does it say about drinking or loneliness. But it would be wrong to dismiss it outright. It’s a horror movie, is all, and deserves credit for its original scares. The first is the use of Guy Fawkes Day as the cover-up for a murder. Crowds gather to build a bonfire, and George Harvey Bone hauls the body of his victim up a ladder, then heaps the woman – masked – grotesquely atop the pile. Her pretty, broken body goes up in an instant, the fire so hot that the public square around it clears.
Bone later kills himself inside a similarly spectacular immolation, but this time he’s accompanied by a group of musicians who gather for a performance at the home of a wealthy patron. Bernard Herrmann composed the score for Hangover Square, and as far as I know, this is the only instance in movies in which the orchestra that provides the music that brings the film to a climax actually participates in the scene. The music is meant to give us some insight into the frenzied state of Bone’s mind, but he can hear it as well as we can, since the men who play the tune surround him and the composition belongs, ostensibly, to Bone.
posted by NPK at 6:03 AM
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