This is quite the evening we have planned! Partnering for the first time with UVM’s Lane Series, we’ll open VTIFF with an exciting event celebrating the sounds and images of film noir. We begin with a screening of the seldom-seen 1945 noir film, Hangover Square, starring Laird Cregar, Linda Darnell, and George Saunders and featuring a score by the great Bernard Herrmann. After the film, the exceptional trio Theremin Noir (Rob Schwimmer, Theremin/Haken Continuum; Sara Caswell, violin; Uri Cain, piano), will perform a live concert featuring the works of Herrmann including pieces from such unforgettable films as Marnie, Vertigo, and Psycho, as well as original works by these three masterful musicians.
Your ticket includes entrance to the film, beginning at 6pm; a reception by Let’s Pretend Catering following the film, featuring hearty hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar, and the performance of Theremin Noir, which will begin at 8:15.
NOTE: This evening will not compete with the official Opening Night film of VTIFF at the Film House that will take place Saturday, Oct 21.
Laird Cregar and Linda Darnelle
ABOUT THE FILM AND THE MUSIC SCORE
Based on the novel Hangover Square; or, The Man with Two Minds by Patrick Hamilton, the film depicts a turn of the century English composer, who, in the midst of writing a dark symphony, also finds himself suffering from intermittent blackouts. 20th Century-Fox found great popular and critical success with the release of the medium-budget thriller The Lodger (1944), which won over audiences with its fog-shrouded, turn-of-the-century London teeming with bawdy showgirls, murder, and an atmosphere of paranoia. The film was a showcase for Fox contract star Laird Cregar, who won acclaim for his brooding performance in the title role. Hangover Square (1945) is the follow-up film, reuniting the director and scenarist of The Lodger with Laird Cregar and co-star George Sanders, with the addition of Linda Darnell.
The film’s score, by the prolific and talented Bernard Herrmann, was apparently known as “Concerto Macabre”. Herrmann so enjoyed how director John Brahm used his score that he stated that he “had photographed his music”. Music plays a crucial role in Hangover Square, and the score became a showcase for Harrmann’s talent. The composer had always preferred to work during a film’s production (as he had on two previous memorable occasions – for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and William Dieterle’s All That Money Can Buy [both 1941]), and this project required an original concerto prior to shooting. In his book A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann, Steven C. Smith describes the composer’s use of repeating motifs to emphasize the themes of the film: “Herrmann carefully establishes each thematic strand in his score so that their ultimate presentation makes sense to us, as well as to Bone onscreen.”
One fan of Hangover Square, and of Herrmann’s score in particular, was a fifteen-year-old music student in New York named Stephen Sondheim. The future composer of Sweeny Todd wrote Herrmann a letter in praise of the concerto and received a thank-you note in reply. Smith quotes Sondheim, who recalls “I can still play the opening eight bars, since they were glimpsed briefly on Laird Cregar’s piano during the course of the film, and I dutifully memorized them by sitting through the picture twice.”
The director Brahm marks the film immediately with a brutal murder from the point-of-view of the killer, a London composer named George Harvey Bone (Cregar) with the flourish of a startling subjective camera scene, utilizing a range of closeups, swooping camera moves and camera effects to work up a sense of delirium.
This is a psychological chiller you won’t soon forget.