The Big Clock

Directed by John Farrow and starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Rita Johnson, this 1948 noir is a combination of farce and thriller.

Victim of circumstance George Stroud (Milland) is sure to be accused of the murder we already know his despotic boss (Laughton) committed. Most of the film, which is based on a Kenneth Fearing novel, is set in and around the skyscraper headquarters of Laughton’s publishing empire, where Milland's in charge of a magazine focused on true crime. All he wants is a vacation with his wife and son, something he's had to put off time and again because Laughton is always shoveling more work at him. He decides to quit, and for some reason has a few drinks with Rita, Laughton's former girl. Then, drunk, he buys a painting and is given a green sundial. The next morning he wakes up in Rita's hotel room with a hangover. He leaves her (still alive) to catch up with his wife in West Virginia, but soon after arriving in Wheeling he gets a phone call. Something bad has happened, and he tells his wife he must return to the city to straighten something out.

Meanwhile, Rita has been bludgeoned to death by sundial. For the next half of the movie, George evades the cops and his colleagues, who are basically working with him to look for him because a few witnesses saw him and Rita together the night before. The Big Clock is a fast 95 minutes of fun noir. It's complex and twisty with witty references to time and a disdain for media moguls and the materialistic.

The Big Goodbye

A behind-the-scenes look at the lives and times that brought us the 70s film noir classic Chinatown. Well-researched and compelling, Wasson’s book dives into the many influences on and vagaries plaguing the film’s creative process and screenplay. It was hard to put down. Wasson focused on Roman Polanski, screenwriter Robert Towne, producer Robert Evans, Jack Nicholson, and Faye Dunaway, along with Sharon Tate, Anjelica Huston, John Huston and more, all connected to the project in some way or another, and at a time when Hollywood was becoming more corporate, less freewheeling and inventive. Ben Affleck recently signed a deal to direct an adaptation of this one, not surprisingly for Paramount. C'mon, Jack, how about a return to the big screen? Who else could pull off John Huston?

The Lady from Shanghai

“Some people can smell danger. Not me.” Says Irish-born boatswain Michael O'Hara (Welles) to Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), in the dark of New York's Central Park. Directed and screenplay-written by Orson Welles, The Lady from Shanghai (1948) is vintage femme-fatale noir that's as silly as it is classic. O'Hara's hired by Elsa's husband Sloane to work aboard their yacht from San Fran to Acapulco and back, then becomes entangled in a sham murder plot involving the miserable couple and Sloane’s pestiferous law partner. Next... well, who knows what happens—the plot's as convoluted as a ball of frayed fishing line in a muddle of weeds. It doesn't matter. It's film noir. Disarray reigns. And the picture has enough style to keep you wanting nothing more. The hall of mirrors scene in the funhouse is fun. Chinatown, the Chinese, and the entrancing Hayworth talking Chinese are all sinologically delightful. Welles' lilty (it's in the OED) accent is caricature off the tongue. The tight editing and overlapping lines are deliciously unsettling and bizarre. This was a Welles experiment you either like or don't. A box office bomb that's tagged either "weird" or "strange." I like. Out of five: ★★★★.