• The Big Clock

6/19/25 (Thurs)

John Farrow’s 1948 film, based on a novel of two years earlier, straddles the line between screwball comedy and noir thriller, not always successfully.

A tyrannical media mogul spots someone slipping out of his mistress’s apartment just as he arrives, and unwittingly kills her in the brawl that follows. He confesses the crime to his right-hand man and intends to give himself in, but the latter convinces him that they can pin it on the man before him since no one saw the mogul enter. Though he didn’t get a clear look at the man’s face, the boss calls his ace crime reporter George to find the culprit – not realizing that George is in fact the man he’s looking for.The married George had ended up there after a boozy night out, missing his own honeymoon (it’s complicated), and while nothing untoward happened, he realizes how that’s going to look to the boss. The problem is that has left numerous witnesses behind, so his aim is to make sure that the investigators all look in the wrong place. His job take on more urgency when, unable to reach the mistress, he sneaks into her place and discovers that she is dead – something that the boss has neglected to tell the police. Realizing that he will be a prime suspect once he’s identified, his mission is to find the killer first. And the race is on.

It feels for the most part like an episode of Dragnet. There’s a nice opening scene where we find the hero in the shadows, then up in the media company’s dark clock tower, which seems like a classic opening of a noir piece. Then it takes on a jokey feel that it maintains for the most part until the climactic scenes. The dialogue is old fashioned, especially the cringey scenes between the hero and his put-upon wife, who is getting tired of waiting for her workaholic hubby to take her on her honeymoon after five years of marriage. Some nice lines do slip in from time to time, most of them by the irrepressible Elsa Lanchester as a starving artist (to an unkind critic: “Come in, I’ve been planning to kill you for years”; told that the media firm is looking for a buyer of her paintings: “So have I for fifteen years”). But overall, the jokes are old and the characterizations weak. I wasn’t sure what the young Henry Morgan was supposed to be doing at all; it was a complicated setup for the clock finale.

The story itself is cleverly put together, though the idea of the woman simply left for dead on the floor was iffy. And the scene where the man misses his honeymoon train and goes romping around town drunk instead with a female stranger – buying drinks, clocks, paintings, a sundial – was just corny.

Ray Milland was bland as the main reporter, a languid Charles Laughton made little impression in a bad-guy role that should have been right up his alley, and Maureen O’Sullivan showed little enthusiasm for her role (to be fair, she was only in it because she was asked by her husband, the director; as an aside, they’re Mia Farrow’s parents). It was Lanchester (Laughton’s wife) who saved the day with her boisterous turn as the wacky artist, helped by some winning dialogue.

The film was remade as No Way Out with Kevin Costner, and it would be interesting to see what they did with it. The bare bones of the story are quite clever, and a remake makes total sense. As is, this version is mainly a distraction for an old-movie night.