- In John Farrow's excellent noir The Big Clock, a high-octane crime reporter named Stroud (Ray Milland) is tasked with catching a murderer. Unfortunately, the prime suspect appears to be himself. Naturally, Stroud didn't kill anybody, but he was spotted gallivanting around town with the now-deceased Miss York (Rita Johnson) on the night she died. To make matters worse, both Stroud and the audience know the real murderer was his boss, the tightly-wound Mr. Janoth (Charles Laughton). In other words, the wrong man has been ordered to identify and locate himself by the right man. Stroud will be lucky if all he loses is his job.
- Speaking of which, Stroud's work situation is rather fascinating. The ever-fastidious Mr. Janoth runs his news corporation much like the film's eponymous timepiece, with tendrils that reach into individual offices, never permitting a moment's delay. When Janoth isn't eavesdropping on his staff with the help of his sycophantic second-in-command (George Macready), he's docking their pay for leaving light bulbs on in unattended closets. Needless to say, Mr. Janoth hasn't afforded Stroud time enough to take a honeymoon despite the fact that he and his long-suffering wife (Maureen O'Sullivan) have been married for several years. Finally, Stroud stands up to Janoth and gets fired for his efforts. Most men would have taken that opportunity to go on vacation, particularly with the Mrs. waiting patiently at the train station, but Stroud chooses instead to hit the dive bars and junk shops with Miss York in an epic quest to locate a green clock. Between this and The Lost Weekend, you have to credit Milland with his penchant for playing the lush.
- In his soberer moments, however, Stroud has made a name for himself in Janoth's publication empire by developing an unorthodox "no detail too small" approach to finding criminals. Unfortunately, it is the accumulation of these small details that forms the circumstantial evidence incriminating him in this case. Rehired by the increasingly desperate Janoth, Stroud finds himself in the awkward position of having to misinterpret all of this compromising data to keep from generating further evidence against himself. In fact, the funniest moment in the film occurs when Stroud ships a dedicated employee off across the country just to prevent him from reporting in with further evidence. The threat of eyewitness testimony from an eruptive goofy artist (Elsa Lanchester) also provides some memorable instances of both tension and humor. Meanwhile, Mr. Janoth sits atop his perch, always watching the clock and looking for somebody else's neck to hang a noose around.
- The impression I get from watching The Big Clock is that it nearly feels like a missing Hitchcock film, which is great praise indeed. In fact, Milland and Laughton both acted for the Master of Suspense, and it is a wonder that Macready (an Alfred Hitchcock Presents regular) never made it into one of Hitch's films, given his scarred countenance and wheezing voice. Still, it is Farrow's masterful handling of a topsy-turvy wrong man tale, adopted from the novel by Kenneth Fearing, that most reminds one of Hitchcock, even if the directorial stylings are somewhat different and, at the risk of being completely unfair to Farrow, slightly inferior. Still, the director has great fun peeking his camera out of elevators, down bustling hallways, and, of course, through clock windows. And when the film's biggest clock, Mr. Janoth himself, finally busts a spring, the experience is truly something to behold.
- The film also features an unrecognizably young Harry Morgan.
