La grande horloge

The Big Clock, starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton, is a great black and white thriller in every way. Unlike many noirs of it's time, it's not a B movie. The lighting, sets, talent and camera-work are top notch. The acting is perfect, as would be expected with a cast like this. Milland is charming and easy to route for. In fact, I usually find him kind of stiff - a little to up tight and proper. Here he seems to be a real guy with real problems. Milland was most famously known for playing an alcoholic three years earlier. In a kind of nod to that "lost weekend" there's a fun scene of him going on a bender in Manhattan - with unforeseen results. Like all noirs, a small wrong decision becomes a bigger and bigger problem latter on. When Milland decides to hang out with a hot blonde instead of going home to his wife, you just know he's gonna get into big trouble. And boy does he. The big trouble is Laughton.

I've always enjoyed Charles "Capt. Bligh" Laughton. He was such a good actor. In The Big Clock he manages to be fascinating and loathsome playing the media empire kingpin. His character has no morals, and it's fun to watch him work. He clearly enjoyed himself making this film.

Oh, and isn't Elsa Lanchester great as the crazy artist? Everyone know's Lanchester. She wore the most famous hairdos in movie history.

Remade as No Way Out with Costner and Hackman in the leads.

An interesting film noir. Milland is good as a Hitchcockian hero who finds himself framed for a murder. Laughton seems to be sleepwalking through his role as the actual murderer. Johnson, an attractive actress who had her career cut short by an accident and had a short and tragic life, plays the murder victim. Farrow (Mia's dad) is no Hitchcock but he directs efficiently and the cast includes O'Sullivan (Mia's mom) as Milland's nagging wife and Morgan as a menacing henchman. Lanchester (Laughton's real life wife) is hilarious as an eccentric artist. After a slow start, the pace picks up and suspense builds, not letting up until the credits roll.

"The Big Clock" takes some chances with unusual characters, and with complicated and sometimes outlandish plot developments, but it holds together well to produce a generally satisfying, and always interesting, suspense film. A fine cast makes us both believe in and identify with the characters, and good direction by John Farrow keeps the film moving, and blends together what otherwise could have been a lot of incongruous plot devices.

Ray Milland is a vital part of the film's success in his role as George Stroud, the editor of a crime magazine who has an amazing talent for tracking down elusive criminals. Already caught in a conflict between his neglected wife and his domineering employer, Stroud finds himself asked to direct a search for an unknown murderer in a case where, because of a chain of circumstantial evidence, all the clues point back to himself. What the audience knows, but Stroud does not, is that the real killer is his boss, played with panache by Charles Laughton, who is obsessed with time and whose proudest creation is a gigantic clock that dominates the publishing house that he runs. The title refers literally to this clock, and perhaps metaphorically refers to the urgency faced by Milland's character as he fights against time trying to extricate himself from his troubles. Milland nicely underplays all of this, and communicates his dilemmas with a lot of credibility.

The supporting cast is an important part of the film, as they must bring life and credibility to a series of oddball plot elements, and they are all quite good. Especially noteworthy is Elsa Lanchester's performance as an eccentric artist whose paintings become one of the clues to the crime. Lanchester is simply wonderful in her scenes, and the movie would be worth watching over again for those alone.

"The Big Clock" is a good example of a "film noir", and will be most enjoyed by those who are fans of the way films of the genre were made in their heyday. But it would also be a good choice for anyone who likes crime/mystery stories and who is willing to look at the way such films were made in an earlier era. After watching "The Big Clock", you might want to see more of them.

When reviewing films like The Big Clock the usual temptation for reviewers is to say it's all right, but Alfred Hitchcock could have done it better. I'm prone to that comment myself.

But I can't see how Hitchcock could have done it better in this case. The plot is complicated, but not so that you get bogged down. It defies encapsulation, but briefly Charles Laughton, a Rupert Murdoch like publisher back in the day kills his mistress Rita Johnson. Earlier that day Johnson had picked up Ray Milland who is the editor of one of Laughton's publications Crimeways magazine and had a night on the town with him.

Laughton sees someone leaving Johnson's apartment, it's Milland, but Laughton only glimpses and can't identify him before killing Johnson. With the help of his right hand man George MacReady, Laughton tries to find the stranger to pin the murder on him and enlists Milland to do it. Milland realizes what the game is and it's quite a duel of wits between two very intelligent people.

Milland, though directed by John Farrow here, is a typical Hitchcock hero trapped by circumstances and desperately looking for a solution. It's possible that Hitchcock saw this film and had Milland in mind for one his films and he did eventually use him in Dial M for Murder.

Laughton covers some familiar ground here. He's a powerful man with a fetish for punctuality. The title of the film refers to The Big Clock in the lobby of his skyscraper in New York. It runs on naval observatory time and is also running in tandem with all the clocks in all the buildings that Janoth publications has in the country. In fact it's Johnson's lateness that sets him off in their confrontation. And Milland throws him off his game by stopping The Big Clock in the lobby.

The closest role that Laughton played to Earl Janoth here has to be Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. Both are complete anal retentives, with Javert it's the law, with Janoth its time. Javert has no personal life, Janoth apparently can't handle one. And with both only an actor of great talent and skill like Charles Laughton can make you be repelled by his actions and still feel some sympathy for him.

The Big Clock holds up very well today and I wish it would be remade and could be. It was with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in No Way Out with the setting now the Pentagon. I'd like to see it updated and keep it in a civilian setting. Though I doubt it would be as good as the Laughton/Milland version.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I'm not sure I would categorize it a noir as much as I would a Mystery/suspense film. But whatever you call it, I call it a great way to spend 95 minutes. I can't recall a film that does a better job of building the suspense as this one. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire last half of the film.

The film makes great use of irony to help achieve this - in that the lead character, George Stroud (Ray Milland), is called upon to search for a wanted man - who turns out to be himself. He is mistakenly believed to be the killer of his boss' mistress, when in reality, it is the boss, Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), who is the guilty party. It is a classic cat and mouse game - except that instead of searching for the "Randolph" character, Stroud is actually trying to find the real killer so as to clear his own name.

Stroud is literally surrounded on all sides by people who could identify him as the man who was with the murdered mistress on the night she was killed. He is running for his life within his own office building trying to avoid being identified. I love how the painting and the artist are used in the story. Elsa Lanchester was a true gem and quite a funny character. It's interesting to note that she was married to Charles Laughton. They certainly make an odd pair - especially in light of the fact of his known homosexuality.

Another married couple from the film was actress Maureen O'Sullivan, who played Stroud's wife, and Director John Farrow. They were married for 27 years (until his death) and had 7 children together, including Mia Farrow. Maureen and Mia appeared together in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986).

Overall, a very good movie with a talented cast.