Big Clock

Year: 1948

Grade: B+

Country: USA

Director: Farrow

Review

ray milland and charles laughton (ruggles of red gap) star in this noir crime-thriller. one way in which this film is different from the other noirs i’ve seen is that the protagonist is not only a good guy, but is somehow able to escape death/prison by the end of the film. in most noirs you have the protagonist who willingly (double indemnity) or not (detour) committed some atrocity for which he must pay later. usually this atrocity is murder/theft and usually he does it because of a woman (whether coerced by a woman (double indemnity) or in order to be with a woman (detour)). big clock begins towards the end, as most noirs do (usually to establish the fact that fate is inescapable), where our protagonist finds himself in a bit of a jam. as the film plays out we find that he’s thought to be a murderer when he really isn’t. the bad guy(s) still gets his due by the end of the film, as is the staple of all film noir, but the difference here is that our protagonist isn’t guilty of anything which adds a different twist to the conventional noir tale. throughout the film there is a definite emphasis on the importance of time – especially for laughton’s character. i think that of this is, at least in part, to emphasize the ever-steady march of time, especially as seen by laughton’s sudden death as if to indicate the fleeting nature of life. in this sense the film reminded me of a far lesser film called “the last minute” by stephen norrington (blade) which is about a character so obsessed by how much time he has left in life that it consumes him to the point of shortening it. there are a few other notable actors who have bit roles in the film – George MacReady (paths of glory), douglas spencer (double indemnity, thing from another world), and harry morgan (M*A*S*H, inherit the wind). surprisingly the film also goes against noir conventions by having a relatively healthy dose of comic relief. this film noir is still noir, but it’s not the same dark world that we see in more prototypical pictures like asphalt jungle or detour. ….forgot to mention that i noticed another noir convention while watching this film – double indemnity, this film, and one or two others that i’ve seen recently have played with music in/out of the film. for example, there will be a piece of music playing in the background and we assume that it’s part of the score, but at some point a character will turn off the radio or close a window signaling to the audience that the music was in the film, rather than over it. a similar technique was employed in “carnival of souls.” in that film i think it reinforced the fact that the protagonist was the author, i’m not sure if the same is true for noirs that employ this technique.