The Big Clock (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Big Clock (1948) – J. Farrow

This film came packaged in a “Universal Noir” DVD boxset (alongside This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and The Blue Dahlia) – to be honest, I always felt this was the lesser of the bunch (the only one without Ladd & Lake). Watching it again last night for Noirvember, I appreciated it a bit more but still feel that its often jokey tone doesn’t quite allow the darkness of the noir themes to come through. As “Crimeways” magazine editor George Stroud, Ray Milland is, in many ways, an archetypal noir protagonist – he’s a bit of a cad who ignores his wife and child, partly because he’s pressured by the publisher Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) and partly because he likes a drink and is happy to chat up a pretty lady. For these latter sins, he is made to pay when one of the women he is out with ends up murdered and his magazine is charged with finding the killer, using their special board of clues that all begin to point directly to George himself.  He’s in a tight spot but thinks he knows the real killer – however time is running out as witnesses who saw the victim with him are lining up to take a look at all of the employees in the building. Janoth cruelly ramps up the pressure, demanding an outcome, without knowing the squeeze George is in. And yet, and yet, Milland’s performance never really captures the dread he would be feeling, instead he displays fast-thinking and scrambles to get out of the jam (with the help of his wife played by Maureen O’Sullivan, director John Farrow’s real wife and mother of Mia Farrow) with a bit of sardonic humour to boot. Enjoyable but I want the darkness.