Concerto Macabro

HANGOVER SQUARE was Laird Cregar's last film (he died at 28) and he turns in a fine performance. You can see how haggard he looks from his 100+ pound weight lose which happened before and during the filming of this movie. His appearance and exhaustion fit well with the role of George Bone though. The scene where he carries the body to the Guy Fawkes bonfire and places it with all the mannequins is very memorable as is the ending. The film score by Bernard Hermann is excellent and the concerto Bone "writes" is believable and tense. Cregar even plays the piano very well. It is too bad he died so young after only 5 years making movies as Hollywood lost a fine talent that was just starting out. John Brahms does a good job directing the atmospheric HANGOVER SQUARE too.

My parents took me to see this when I was 8 & I had nightmares about it for a month or more - compounded by the knowledge that the lead, the great Laird Cregar died shortly after his appearance in it (of complications from dieting - at age 28!). The total immersion of this film into the clinical madness of a composer who cracks up when he hears discordant sounds & the greed & opportunism of his paramour give it a real nasty Edwardian gothic mood. There are scenes of creepiness here that seem almost the prototypes for Hitchcock classics like Psycho & Vertigo. (Bernard Hermann wrote the composer's scores as well as the background music). But it's also a great exercise on good vs evil, apollo vs dionysius & above all high art vs low art. The 2 main leads, Cregar & Sanders, the director & writer were involved in the making of The Lodger - a Jack the Ripper film - the year before.

HANGOVER SQUARE is one of my favorite films in which LAIRD CREGAR appeared--in fact, his last before a crash diet ruined his health and led to his death at age 28. Seeing him in this film, made me realize what a wonderful Rochester he would have made in '44's JANE EYRE. He had the kind of presence that looms over every frame of this film, even when he's not actually in the scene.

He's a troubled musician who reacts violently when he hears certain discordant sounds. LINDA DARNELL makes an attractive romantic presence in her period costuming (it takes place in Victorian London), and GEORGE SANDERS does a nice job as a doctor (a good guy for a change).

The scenes that stand out are Cregar climbing the ladder of a bonfire to dispose of his latest victim and the finale where he's playing the piano in a deserted building as the flames spread around him--all the while Bernard Herrmann's score is making an impact.

It's a delicious LAIRD CREGAR performance and a fitting finale to his short but illustrious career. It's somewhat similar to a previous film, THE LODGER, another Victorian thriller he did with Merle Oberon.

In this variation on the Jekyll and Hyde story, a composer has sporadic episodes where his subconscious takes over and he has no recollections of his actions during these lapses when he comes to. This film reunites Cregar and Sanders with director Brahm from "The Lodger" the previous year, and, like the earlier film, it is visually opulent but the story is less than compelling. Cregar gives perhaps his best performance in this, his final film before his untimely death at age 31 just as he was coming into his own. Darnell, who would also die young, is a sensuous presence as the object of his obsession. Herrmann provides an impressive score, including a piano concerto used in the finale.

Well worth watching, if you can find it. Cregar is excellent as the concert pianist tortured by obsession with a woman, and what it leads to. Moody, urgent (all the more so in black and white), with mounting suspense and tension. Lush Bernard Hermann score that expresses his anguish. Bonfire scene is gripping.