{ "id": "epnwkatnnf", "slug": "the-big-clock", "title": "The Big Clock", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films", "label": "Film noir and neo-noir films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films.yr-1940-1975", "label": "Released 1940 to 1975", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films.yr-1940-1975" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films", "label": "United States · 1946 to 2000: Film noir and neo-noir films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946", "label": "United States · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films", "label": "Film noir and neo-noir films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Big Clock (1948) is a Paramount film noir directed by John Farrow, starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton, adapted from Kenneth Fearing's 1946 novel about an editor hunting himself; remade as No Way Out (1987).", "snippet": "The Big Clock (1948) is a Paramount film noir directed by John Farrow, starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton, adapted from Kenneth Fearing's 1946 novel about an editor hunting himself; remade as No Way Out (1987).", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films.yr-1940-1975", "markdown": "# The Big Clock\n\n**The Big Clock** is a 1948 American film noir thriller directed by [John Farrow](https://www.edgepedia.org/john-farrow) and starring [Ray Milland](https://www.edgepedia.org/ray-milland), Charles Laughton, and [Maureen O'Sullivan](https://www.edgepedia.org/maureen-osullivan), in which a crime-magazine editor is assigned by his publisher to hunt a murderer who turns out to be the publisher himself, making the editor the hunter of his own trail. It was produced by Paramount Pictures from Kenneth Fearing's 1946 suspense novel of the same title, adapted for the screen by Jonathan Latimer.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) • [2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | 9 April 1948, Paramount Pictures, Inc.; black and white, Western Electric recording[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) |\n| Runtime | 93 or 95 minutes (AFI); listed at 1h 35m and 1h 36m by other sources[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_clock) |\n| Principal cast | Ray Milland (George Stroud), Charles Laughton (Earl Janoth), Maureen O'Sullivan (Georgette Stroud), George Macready (Steve Hagen), Rita Johnson (Pauline York), Elsa Lanchester[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) |\n| Key crew | Director John Farrow; writer Jonathan Latimer; producer Richard Maibaum; cinematographer John F. Seitz; editor Eda Warren; costumes Edith Head[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) • [4](https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/the-big-clock) |\n| Source | Novel *The Big Clock* by Kenneth Fearing (New York, 1946)[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) |\n| Working title | *Judas Picture*, also the title of Fearing's magazine condensation in *American* magazine[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) |\n| Recognition | Nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery picture of 1948[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nGeorge Stroud, editor-in-chief of *Crimeways*, the true-crime magazine within the Janoth Publications empire, is finally about to take a honeymoon after seven years of marriage when his tyrannical boss, Earl Janoth, orders him onto an assignment on pain of dismissal. Stroud resigns and spends a drunken evening with Pauline York, Janoth's unhappy mistress, at a Manhattan bar; the two half-inebriatedly plot to embarrass Janoth.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_clock)\n\nThe film is not a whodunit. The audience sees the killing from the start: Janoth, visiting Pauline at night, bludgeons her to death after she taunts him about having been out with another man. Stroud, guilty of nothing more than standing up his wife and their five-year-old son, is left with a tightening ring of clues from his evening with the victim, all pointing to him.[5](https://www.cjr.org/critical_eye/the_big_clock_1948.php)\n\nJanoth and his amoral lieutenant Steve Hagen then select their clever employee Stroud to locate the unknown witness who can place Janoth at the scene, intending to eliminate that witness and pin the murder on him. Stroud must run the full investigative apparatus of the magazine empire to find this person, himself, while slowing the hunt enough to establish Janoth's guilt.[6](https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1268-when-it8217s-okay-to-stray-from-the-source-no-way-out-resets-the-big-clock/) The film opens with Stroud hiding from security guards in the clock tower of the Janoth Publications building, reflecting that thirty-six hours earlier he was leading a normal life.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK)\n\n## Production\n\nProduction ran from late February to mid-April 1947, and the film carried the working title *Judas Picture* before release under Fearing's own title.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK) Maureen O'Sullivan, who was married to director John Farrow, returned to the screen after a five-year hiatus for the role of Georgette Stroud.[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) The title song, \"The Big Clock,\" was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK)\n\n**Design and photography.** John F. Seitz's high-contrast cinematography and the art direction of Hans Dreier, Roland Anderson, and Albert Nozaki built the Janoth skyscraper as a self-contained corporate world, topped by the enormous clock of the title. Reviewers have singled out the building, complete with its titular timepiece, as an architectural marvel of the film.[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_clock) According to Par News, the elevator used in the final scenes was a set piece operated hydraulically and capable of being hoisted ten feet.[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography)\n\n**A television first.** On April 22, 1948, Paramount's first motion picture trailer made especially for television, promoting *The Big Clock*, was broadcast on KTLA, an early instance of a studio promoting a theatrical film on the new medium.[7](https://escholarship.org/content/qt14h0461n/qt14h0461n.pdf)\n\n## The corporate world of Janoth Publications\n\nThe film's setting is a magazine conglomerate resembling [Time Inc.](https://www.edgepedia.org/time-inc), with titles such as *Crimeways*, *Sportways*, *Artways*, and *Dollarways* stacked in a single skyscraper beneath Janoth's penthouse boardroom. The resources Janoth turns on the manhunt are specified on screen: forty-three foreign bureaus, 3,600 employees, and a budget, in 1948 dollars, of $37 million. Stroud, who before joining Janoth had worked as an assistant editor at the *Wheeling Carrier* in [West Virginia](https://www.edgepedia.org/west-virginia), earns $30,000 a year, a salary the film presents as the price of the simpler life he traded away.[5](https://www.cjr.org/critical_eye/the_big_clock_1948.php)\n\nIn Fearing's novel, the clock of the title works as a metaphor on several levels at once: the Time-like publishing empire, the time-serving grind of corporate life, and the countdown against which Stroud works on two fronts at once.[6](https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1268-when-it8217s-okay-to-stray-from-the-source-no-way-out-resets-the-big-clock/)\n\n## Elsa Lanchester's painter and Alice Neel\n\n[Elsa Lanchester](https://www.edgepedia.org/elsa-lanchester), Laughton's real-life wife, plays Louise Patterson, an eccentric [Greenwich Village](https://www.edgepedia.org/greenwich-village) painter who becomes a witness in the hunt. The character is based on the painter [Alice Neel](https://www.edgepedia.org/alice-neel): in the novel, Stroud has bought one of Patterson's paintings in a junk store on the night of the crime, and the artist, who had been trying to buy back her own work, can identify him. Fearing's description of her figurative style, with \"simplified abstractionism and fresh intensifications of color,\" matches Neel's look, and Stroud's reflections on the character echo Neel's standing in the 1940s art world.[8](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/alice-neel-the-big-clock-2294677)\n\n## Adaptations and afterlife\n\nFearing's novel has been adapted for the screen several times. The 1948 film appeared a mere two years after the book's publication. The story was officially adapted again in France as *Police Python 357* (1976), with [Yves Montand](https://www.edgepedia.org/yves-montand) and [Simone Signoret](https://www.edgepedia.org/simone-signoret), and in the United States as *No Way Out* (1987), directed by [Roger Donaldson](https://www.edgepedia.org/roger-donaldson) and starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young, which relocates the story to Washington military and intelligence circles; the low-budget *Scandal Sheet* (1952) is an unofficial spin on the same premise.[9](https://streamondemandathome.com/the-big-clock-1948-dvd-blu-ray-vod/) • [2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) The film's climax amid the clock mechanism atop the Janoth skyscraper inspired the clocktower set piece in the Coen Brothers' *The Hudsucker Proxy*.[8](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/alice-neel-the-big-clock-2294677)\n\nRay Milland and O'Sullivan recreated their roles on radio for *The Screen Director's Playhouse* on 15 July 1949, and the film was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery picture of 1948, with nominations selected by a group of prominent American mystery writers.[2](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography) Later home-video releases, including an Arrow Academy Blu-ray and a Criterion Channel streaming run, have carried commentary by the academic Adrian Martin, interviews with Laughton biographer [Simon Callow](https://www.edgepedia.org/simon-callow) and film scholar Adrian Wootton, and a vintage radio dramatization.[9](https://streamondemandathome.com/the-big-clock-1948-dvd-blu-ray-vod/) • [10](https://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/the_big_clock/)\n\n## Reception and style\n\nThe film holds a 100% Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 10 reviews, with an audience score of 84% from more than 1,000 ratings, and 7.6/10 on IMDb from about 11,000 users.[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_clock) • [11](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040160/) Critics have noted that it straddles thriller and comedy: Jonathan Latimer's fast-paced script gives the actors barbs and one-liners in the screwball manner, while the mounting evidence against Stroud builds sustained suspense. [Charles Laughton](https://www.edgepedia.org/charles-laughton)'s performance as the aloof, imposing mogul is repeatedly singled out as the film's anchor, with Ray Milland playing the frantic, affable hero against him.[10](https://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/the_big_clock/) Time Out praised Farrow's evocative direction, reading the conglomerate's enormous clock as indicating both the race against time and the inhumanly inflexible world in which the action takes place.[12](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-big-clock)\n\nSome critics place it at the edge of the noir cycle rather than at its center: its visual style lacks the heavy shadows and claustrophobic atmosphere of more traditional film noirs, with only the scene in the clockworks slipping into a visual labyrinth of darkness, and one retrospective called it \"the wittiest of the classic noirs and the least interested in doom.\"[9](https://streamondemandathome.com/the-big-clock-1948-dvd-blu-ray-vod/) • [13](https://asidehouse.com/screen/the-big-clock-the-man-hunting-himself/)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Big Clock, AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK)\n2. [The Big Clock (1948), AFI Catalog, filmography page](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/25465-THE-BIG-CLOCK?cxt=filmography)\n3. [The Big Clock, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/big_clock)\n4. [The Big Clock, Universal Pictures At Home](https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/the-big-clock)\n5. [The Big Clock (1948): A murderous publisher's corporate noir, Columbia Journalism Review](https://www.cjr.org/critical_eye/the_big_clock_1948.php)\n6. [When it's okay to stray from the source: No Way Out resets The Big Clock, Library of America](https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1268-when-it8217s-okay-to-stray-from-the-source-no-way-out-resets-the-big-clock/)\n7. [UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations on Paramount and television](https://escholarship.org/content/qt14h0461n/qt14h0461n.pdf)\n8. [How Much of a Character Was Alice Neel? Just Look at 'The Big Clock,' Artnet News](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/alice-neel-the-big-clock-2294677)\n9. [The Big Clock (1948), Stream On Demand](https://streamondemandathome.com/the-big-clock-1948-dvd-blu-ray-vod/)\n10. [The Big Clock review, Under the Radar Magazine](https://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/the_big_clock/)\n11. [The Big Clock (1948), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040160/)\n12. [The Big Clock film review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-big-clock)\n13. [The Big Clock: The Man Hunting Himself, Aside House](https://asidehouse.com/screen/the-big-clock-the-man-hunting-himself/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Film noir and neo-noir films › Released 1940 to 1975*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Big Clock\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Big Clock](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Big Clock\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-big-clock. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Big Clock is a Paramount film noir directed by John Farrow, starring Ray Milland and Charles Laughton, adapted from Kenneth Fearing's 1946 novel about an editor hunting himself; remade as No Way Out." }