HANGOVER SQUARE
; (20th Century-Fox)
| TAKE this opportunity to pay a brief and belated tribute to. Hangover Square and its unfortunate but gifted hero, George Harvey Bone,
whom I ran to earth last week in a return-season theatre after a chase lasting several months. I would doubt if this thriller is psychiatrically sound, for it _is based on the proposition that sudden, discordant sounds could periodically turn a_ sensitive musician into a homicidal maniac: a pretty fancy, but if there were anything in the idea one would expect the mortality rate to be rather higher than it is, especially in the vicinity of radio stations. The customary suspense expected from this type of thriller is also lacking, because there can’t be much suspense when the identity of the murderer and the secret of his psychosis is known almost from the start to everybody, including the sympathetic fellows from Scotland Yard. In spite of this, however, Hangover Square is one of those rather rare thril- . lers which improve considerably as they go along (I think the improvement sets . in to a marked degree about the time Linda Darnell is removed from the cast by strangulation). The climax comes in a literal blaze of glory with George Harvey Bone, surrounded by flames of his own kindling, pounding out the last notes of his ill-fated concerto. It is real music this, specially composed for the film by Bernard Henmann; I only hope someone had the foresight to rescue the score from the flames and record it for broadcasting, for the Hangover Square Concerto is at least as worthy of perpetuation as the Warsaw Concerto. And before this musical climax there is another fine sequence: the episode on Guy Fawkes Night. You can feel a shiver go round the audience at this moment and no wonder, for the director (John Brahm) has treated the macabre incident with an almost poetical imagination. Hangover Square was, I think, the last film of that fine and subtle actor, the late Laird Cregar. His performance as George Harvey Bone is a good one by which to remember him.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 349, 1 March 1946, Page 24
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349HANGOVER SQUARE New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 349, 1 March 1946, Page 24
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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