The Big Clock **** (1948, Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, George Macready, Rita Johnson, Elsa Lanchester) – Classic Movie Review 2575

Charles Laughton grabs the opportunity to shine in director John Farrow’s outstanding 1948 Hitchcockian thriller The Big Clock. 

In director John Farrow’s outstanding 1948 Hitchcockian black-and-white film noir thriller The Big Clock, Charles Laughton grabs the opportunity to shine in what was at the time his best role for a long while as a megalomaniac publishing tycoon called Earl Janoth.

In New York City, Laughton’s Janoth quarrels with his crime reporter George Stroud (Ray Milland), editor-in-chief of Crimeways magazine, who becomes the main suspect when the boss’s mistress Pauline York (Rita Johnson) is found dead.

[Spoiler alert] After Janoth murders Pauline York at the height of passion, he covers his tracks and frames an innocent man, whose identity he doesn’t know. He turns out to be Stroud, a close associate on his magazine, who he enlists to entrap the killer with his ‘help’.

Farrow’s movie is especially atmospheric, tense and stylish, as well as very satisfying. Farrow’s direction is taut, spare and pacy, John F Seitz’s noir black and white cinematography is eye-catching, while Jonathan Latimer’s fine screenplay is adapted from Kenneth Fearing’s 1946 novel.

Paramount Pictures bought the rights to the book before publication for $45,000 after Fearing’s 1939 novel The Hospital became a bestseller.

Unusually, Laughton’s salary included the fee for his wife Elsa Lanchester, in an amusing small role as an odd artist called Louise Patterson.

O’Sullivan and Farrow were also married. It is O’Sullivan’s first film in six years, since 1942’s Tarzan’s New York Adventure, leaving movies to raise her family. She did it as a favour to Farrow.

Also in the cast are Maureen O’Sullivan, George Macready, Dan Tobin, Harry Morgan [Henry Morgan], Richard Webb, Lloyd Corrigan, Margaret Field, Philip Van Zandt, Douglas Spencer, Frank Orth, Bobby Watson, Harold Vermilyea and James Burke.

Noel Neill (November 25, 1920 – July 3, 2016) has an uncredited part as an elevator operator early in the film. She played Lois Lane in the film serials Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs Superman (1950), and in the 1950s TV series Adventures of Superman.

It was remade in 1976 as Police Python 357, updated to the Orléans Police Department in France.

No Way Out (1987) with Kevin Costner is a second loose remake, updating it to the US Department of Defense in Washington DC in the Cold War.

The cast are Ray Milland as George Stroud, Charles Laughton as Earl Janoth, Maureen O’Sullivan as Georgette Stroud, George Macready as Steve Hagen, Rita Johnson as Pauline York, Elsa Lanchester as Louise Patterson, Harry Morgan [Henry Morgan] as Bill Womack, Harold Vermilyea as Don Klausmeyer, Dan Tobin as Ray Cordette, Richard Webb as Nat Sperling, Elaine Riley as Lily Gold, Luis Van Rooten as reporter Edwin Orlin, Douglas Spencer as reporter Bert Finch, Bobby Watson as Morton Spaulding, Lloyd Corrigan as Colonel Jefferson Randolph aka McKinley, Frank Orth as Burt, Margaret Field as Second Secretary, Noel Neill as elevator operator, Al Ferguson as Guard, and James Burke.

It was released on April 9, 1948 in the US.

It runs 95 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2575

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