Stream On: ‘The Big Clock’ is hard-boiled poetry
Poet Kenneth Fearing’s fourth novel “The Big Clock” achieved much popularity and was released as a fine film noir by Paramount in 1948.
“Proletarian poet” Kenneth Fearing’s fourth novel The Big Clock (1946) achieved much popularity and was released as a film by Paramount in 1948. Scholars consider Fearing’s main literary contribution to be in poetry, but the 1980 paperback republication of The Big Clock represents mystery buffs’ recognition of the novel as a classic. Paramount’s movie treatment (below) is a film-noir classic as well.
/Streaming /Amazon /Archive.org /😎100%😌83% /Trailer /1948 /PG
Nearly as hard-boiled as private detectives, the usual subjects of films noir, are newspapermen and their colleagues, magazine writers. Especially those who work at a magazine called Crimeways, one component of a publishing empire comprising the titles Sportways, Airways, Styleways, and Newsways.
As The Big Clock opens, George Stroud (Ray Milland), a star reporter for Crimeways, who has built his reputation on solving high-profile cases for the magazine, is himself skulking around its offices in the night, looking to hide. He avoids a watchman, and thinks, “Whew! That was close. The lobby's sewed up like a sack, and they said, ‘Shoot to kill.’ They meant you, George. You. How'd I get into this rat race, anyway? I'm no criminal. What happened? When did it all start? Just 36 hours ago I was down there, crossing that lobby on my way to work, minding my own business, looking forward to my first vacation in years. Thirty-six hours ago I was a decent, respectable law-abiding citizen ... with a wife and a kid and a big job. Just 36 hours ago by the big clock.”
The titular clock is the pride and joy of publisher Earl Janoth (an imperious Charles Laughton, Rembrandt). “It's the most accurate and the most unique privately owned clock in the world. Behind a huge map of the globe is a single master mechanism. Built at a cost of $600,000, it is set so you can tell the time anywhere on the Earth: London, Chicago, Honolulu and so forth. It also synchronizes the clocks in this building with those in Janoth’s secondary printing plants in Kansas City and San Francisco and in the 43 foreign bureaus of the Janoth organization.”
In Stroud’s flashback, he had wanted to take an overdue vacation. His wife especially was nearly fed up. But Mr. Janoth wanted him to stay to pursue a missing-person story that Stroud had just cracked.
Stroud refuses and Janoth fires him. Stroud then goes to a bar to drink--why not?--and is distracted by the attentions of Janoth's glamorous mistress Pauline York (Rita Johnson), who proposes a blackmail plan against Janoth. When Stroud loses track of time and misses the train for the vacation, his wife angrily leaves without him. Stroud spends the evening drinking with York, and he buys a painting and a sundial.
Stroud and York go to her apartment, but York sees Janoth arriving and Stroud leaves. Janoth sees someone leaving but does not recognize Stroud in the dark. Janoth assumes that York is cheating on him, leading to a quarrel in which he strikes York with the sundial, killing her.
Janoth decides to frame the man he saw leaving York’s apartment. Stroud has since caught up with his wife and son on vacation in West Virginia and tells her only that he has been fired. Janoth calls to rehire him in order to lead the effort to find the mystery man (without any mention of York). But he discloses enough details for Stroud to know that he is the mystery man. He reluctantly agrees to return to his job and lead the manhunt--for himself.
The Big Clock is textbook noir: beautiful stark black-and-white photography, wise-cracking characters and a pervasive air of cynicism. It was reimagined in 1987 and filmed as No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman in a cold-war setting.
Sources include The Poetry Foundation;Scripts.com; and The Internet Movie DataBase.
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.