“The big clock ran everywhere, overlooked no one, omitted no one, forgot nothing, remembered nothing, knew nothing. Was nothing. I would have liked to add, but I knew better. It was just about everything. Everything there is.”—George Stroud in The Big Clock
The Temptation of Saint Judas
Originally published in 1946, Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock is the story of George Stroud, editor of Crimeways magazine; one of several publications in the Janoth Enterprises publishing empire. Despite how much he doesn’t want to admit it, Stroud is a square peg trying hard to fit in a round hole-unsatisfied with his job and his marriage. Fearing’s “big clock” is a metaphor for the invisible framework that seems to control the fate of man; the droning beat to which most men march and a rhythm with which Stroud denies being in step. Stroud fancies himself a free thinker, outside the “pincer claws” and “grinding gears” of the machinations of the “big clock.”
When the opportunity presents itself, Stroud leaps at the chance to shed his gray flannel life and bed a beautiful blonde, Pauline Delos. The two have a few dates, including a night away in Albany and a gay old time in Manhattan the next day. As that fateful night draws to a close, George heads home but not before he turns his head and spies another man climbing the steps to Pauline’s apartment. The other man is another of Pauline’s lovers, Earl Janoth, Stroud’s boss.
Janoth and Pauline have a spat over the shadowy man that Janoth spotted walking from Pauline’s. “At least this time it’s a man,” Janoth quips.
She angrily counters by questioning Janoth’s own sexual feelings toward his right-hand man, Steve Hagen. “Do you think I’m blind? Did I ever see you two together when you weren’t camping?” Pauline demands, “As if you weren’t married to that guy all your life. Go on, you son of a bitch, try and act surprised.” In a fit of rage, Janoth bludgeons her to death with a brandy decanter.
Janoth then turns to Steve Hagen, the only man he can trust. The cool, calculating Hagen concocts a scheme to provide Janoth with an alibi and discover the elusive figure whom could connect the magazine magnate to the crime. In order to do this, Hagen puts the skilled editor of Crimeways to work, forcing George Stroud into a queer predicament.
In Pauline’s death, all fingers point to the last man spotted with her. However, Stroud can’t stand firm and deny his guilt because, more than circumstantial evidence, to tell his side of the story would ruin his tenuous marriage. Stroud also can’t dawdle in his investigation less he draw suspicion. He has to give the appearance of doing his usual dogged job of investigation while hoping to escape the hangman’s noose by uncovering enough evidence to get an edge on Janoth.
In The Big Clock, Fearing employs no less than seven narrators to tell his tale including Stroud, Janoth, Hagen, Stroud’s wife, two Crimeways reporters, and eccentric artist Louise Patterson. This typical Fearing technique does a terrific job of capturing each narrators’ voice, from the philosophical musings of Stroud, to the reptilian assessments of Hagen, to the uncontrolled tittering of Patterson.
Hagen concocts the excuse that Stroud is looking for a missing link in a high-powered political-industrial deal. Meanwhile, it appears that there are some shady dealings going on behind the scenes at Janoth Enterprises that do not concern Pauline Delos. During his search, Stroud discovers a leak within the organization that is strengthening a rival company, Jennett-Donohue, for a takeover of Janoth’s empire. Fearing cleverly refers to this treachery with the misnomer for a painting Stroud purchased on his last night out with Pauline—“The Temptation of St. Judas.” However, Fearing never identifies the traitor, keeping with the slap-dash resolution of the book.
Not only does The Big Clock end abruptly, the final chapter is ironically nonsensical in its chronological structure. From approximately 8:30 PM to some indeterminate hour (which is stated as being “the rest of the day”), Stroud speaks of making dinner dates and buying tickets for a show that night. To top that, not more than a page later he’s talking about that afternoon. Perhaps Fearing is making an overly conscious effort to subvert “the big clock” by this shift in hour. Likewise, he seems to convey the sentiment that there are no nicely wrapped conclusions in life by never explaining the circumstances behind the novel’s business intrigue. He does this via a story that Stroud tells his daughter with a moral of not pulling at any “loose threads.”
With so much of Fearing’s book so taut and specific, it boggles the mind how sloppily his book ends. It’s reminiscent of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn whose climax is completely unsatisfying; feeling like Clemens awoke one morning determined to finally finish his tale before lunchtime.
A Lighter Shade of Noir
John Farrow’s 1948 film, The Big Clock, acts as an ultimately much more satisfying interpretation of Fearing’s words and intentions. Screenwriter Jonathan Lattimer does a remarkable job of adapting and improving upon Fearing’s work. While removing any overt references to homosexuality and keeping Stroud and Pauline’s relationship outside the bedroom, he infused the tale with enough morality to satisfy censors of the day. Lattimer also brings the “big clock” to which Stroud constantly refers, out of the metaphorical and into the physical by placing a large clock in the lobby of Janoth Enterprises. Farrow introduces the audience to Stroud as he’s cowering in the clock, scared of something which he begins to expose via the typical noir techniques of flashbacks and voiceover narration.
Ray Milland is perfect as the suave yet plagued Stroud. Charles Laughton plays Janoth as the tightly wound master spring in “the big clock.” In speaking of the man who could place him at the scene of the crime, Laughton impeccably delivers the lines, “It would be most unpleasant for me if he were to insist he saw me entering her apartment. I shall have to call him a liar.”
Meanwhile, George Macready and Elsa Lanchester threaten to steal the show with their portrayals of Steve Hagen and Louis Patterson. Macready perfectly captures the essence of Hagen as described by Fearing; “He was a good self-portrait of candor [and] his voice was a good phonographic reproduction of the slightly confidential friend.” Lanchester infuses her performance with mad gales of laughter that keep the audience guessing about her stability and intentions.
The most understated and effective performance comes courtesy of a young, dark haired Henry (“Harry”) Morgan as Bill, Janoth’s mute aide. In Fearing’s novel, Janoth says Bill “has always taken my orders, thirty years ago during the hottest part of the circulation war out West, then in the printer’s strike upstate. That was why he was with me now. If he wouldn’t talk even to me, after thirty odd years, he would never talk to anyone.” Usually dressed in dark clothes and slightly out-of-focus, Bill is present throughout the film, standing in the background of group shots and loitering in the Crimeways office as a constant reminder of Stroud’s precarious position. While menacing, he’s also well aware of the slippery nature of Janoth and doesn’t appear to wholly approve of his boss’ nefarious actions.
Screenwriter Lattimer does well to dispose of any talks of a takeover or internal espionage. The ending of Fearing’s book was much too contrite with a cross-culmination of the search for Stroud and the close-door meeting between Janoth, Hagen, and agents of Jennett-Donohue. There is no reason why the search for the mystery killer need be called off but it is regardless, as if it would simply infringe on the surreptitious corporate surrender.
Described in Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (ISBN: 0-87951-479-5) as being one of the “lighter shades of film noir,” the film concedes to most noir conventions. The flashback time structure employed keeps audiences in suspense with the knowledge that at some point in the story our protagonist will find himself caught in the jam from the beginning of the film. In this case, Stroud finds that he’s trapped inside “the big clock,” armed guards hot on his trail. The clock at Janoth Enterprises controls all of the timepieces in the building, as omnipresent and omnipotent as Janoth would like to think he is. Appropriately, timepieces become a well-used motif in the film-even the murder weapon has been changed from a decanter to a sundial.
Shamefully, John Farrow’s The Big Clock has only recently been made available on home video. Before that, the only movie adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s novel widely available was Roger Donaldson’s 1987 spy-thriller, No Way Out.
Will The Real Kaiser Soze Please Stand Up?
Screenwriter Robert Garland’s adaptation of Fearing’s work is rife with convoluted Cold War gibberish and technological claptrap. Moving the primary setting from the Janoth building to the Pentagon, Kevin Costner plays the protagonist, Lieutenant Commander Tom Farrell. More stupid than heroic, Costner has as much charm as a lint brush and his character is as fleshed out as a slice of baloney. He is not alone, however, as no one in Donaldson’s film gives any sort of convincing performance.
Beginning with Farrell telling his tale to two unnamed agents of some sort, the film attempts to employ a flashback framing device but fails. The audience is already privy to two important facts: Farrell appears to be in no life-threatening predicament and he has clearly escaped the confines of the Pentagon, sitting in a suburban Washington D.C. home. While not necessarily “safe,” Farrell doesn’t appear to be in the immediate danger of George Stroud in The Big Clock.
As Farrell begins his story, the audience is introduced to his love interest, Susan Atwell. If this film is remarkable for any reason, it is that, as Atwell, Sean Young gives possibly the worst performance of her awful career. Her face slathered in make-up, her sexuality amounts to nil. Young delivers her hackneyed dialogue with cardboard plausibility, making supermodel-turned-actress Iman’s turn as Atwell’s gal pal Nina Beka, seem the work of a master thespian.
Gene Hackman played his cards right in the remaking of another classic film noir, Narrow Margin. But his turn as the villainous David Brice is usurped by his character’s lack of backbone and the fact that he’s not even a murderer! Atwell was merely a victim of a nasty slip-and-fall accident! Known for his good performances despite the dreck with which he finds himself involved, even Hackman can’t save face in this film. The seasoned actor seems to find the film as distasteful as I do, not even opting to give the scenery a good chewing for fear of a nasty aftertaste. Instead, Hackman leaves that task up to a young Will Patton who plays Brice’s aide-de-camp, Scott Pritchard.
Like the screenplay, direction, and embarrassing score by Maurice Jarre, Pritchard is not at all subtle in his malevolence. He is single of purpose in finding the man who could implicate Brice in Atwell’s murder. To this end he employs Farrell to carry out the search, under the auspices of searching for a mythological mole within the State Department called “Yuri.” Meanwhile, Brice cowers in his office, understandably unsure of the plausibility of the plan.
For every shrewd action of George Stroud, Tom Farrell makes a blundering error. For every moment where Stroud had to remain calm, Farrell flies off the handle. Instead of the silent and threatening presence of Bill, Farrell is under watch by two goons with whom he often combatively interacts. He doesn’t sidestep them. No, he makes a mad dash for the door. Still, it is obvious to no one how erratic he’s acting.
There is no all-encompassing clock in No Way Out, physical or figurative. Yet, there is a “ticking clock” which Farrell races against-a partial photographic image being rebuilt pixel by pixel by computer genius Sam Hessellman. As Hessellman, George Dzundza gives a standout performance. His scenes even outnumber those of Hackman who is noticeably absent during all of this brouhaha.
The ending of No Way Out and The Big Clock play out similarly, even down to some of the dialogue used by Brice when getting ready to hang Pritchard out to dry. Unlike Fearing’s novel or Farrow’s film, though, the search for the mystery man is not called off at the last second. Instead, the picture of “Yuri” is fully rendered, showing Farrell as a known associate of Atwell. This should not be a problem as the “real murderer” has been apprehended (Pritchard proving his loyalty by shooting himself and taking the fall). Be that as it may, Farrell still makes a completely unmemorable “daring escape” from the Pentagon, which takes us to the beginning of the film where he’s explaining his actions to the two unknown agents.
Normally, the moment when a film’s flashback narrative overlaps with the initial scene of the film comes at an opportune time in the plot. Perhaps it’s just as the third act is beginning or it’s part of an ironic denouement. In No Way Out, however, it signals that the film has gone from throttling the audience to slapping them in the face. For, you see, the anticlimactic “twisty ending” is that there indeed was a Yuri and-gasp-it’s Farrell! How, um, unpredictable!
All of our expectations about the character have been wrong and, while not a murderer, he’s a bad guy after all! And, to top that, he’s the living embodiment of Prichard and Brice’s made-up cover story. Oh, the irony! Oh, the pain! What was that line about the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making the world believe he didn’t exist? Well, Yuri turns out to be alive and well in a completely banal, albeit appropriate, ending to No Way Out.
The Punishment for Perversity
“I knew that blundering weak fool better than his own mother. If I shut my eyes I could actually see him standing in front of me, an imbecile wisp of a smile on his too good-looking face, I could hear his smooth, studied, disarming voice uttering those round, banal whimsicalities he apparently loved, I could almost reach out and touch him, this horrid wraith who had stumbled into my life from nowhere to bring about Pauline’s death and my possible ruin.”—Earl Janoth in The Big Clock
Oddly, neither of the movie versions of Fearing’s novel comes close to capturing the carefree immorality of their protagonist. In Farrow’s The Big Clock, George and Paulette are friends, not lovers. In No Way Out, Tom Farrell is unmarried while cavorting with Susan Atwell. Fearing’s Stroud is far from being just a poor schlub caught up in incriminating circumstances one night with the boss’ main squeeze. Stroud has had prior affairs, and even when he’s being described as a boozer, womanizer, and a smart-alecky bastard, he doesn’t appear overly disturbed by these impugning adjectives.
I suppose that Stroud should be grateful that there are adjectives for his character. For both George Chester (Stroud’s alias in Fearing’s novel) and Jefferson Randolph (Stroud’s alias in Farrow’s film) are much more “fleshed out” even as descriptions of a character than either “Yuri” or his “actual” counterpart, Tom Farrell, are. Nothing is known about Yuri—his habits, his taste in art, liquor or women. He’s just a name as Costner’s Farrell is just a John Doe of a protagonist.
Even though Farrell/Yuri might be a double agent, he’s still presented as an entirely clean-cut/bland young man. The lasciviousness of No Way Out is unnecessary nudity on the part of Sean Young and a few out-of-character expletives. When it seems that Garland might be returning to Fearing’s work to restore the sexual orientations of some of its characters, he doesn’t know how to handle them. He merely uses Pritchard’s homosexuality to eliminate him from a list of Atwell’s suspected lovers. Meanwhile, Fearing appears to use homosexuality as both a source of lewd titillation and as stigmatic immorality. It’s no coincidence that the admittedly bisexual and suspected homosexual characters are eliminated while the hyper-heterosexual Stroud and Patterson are lauded despite their history of out-of-wedlock excursions.
The mandatory morality of Farrow’s The Big Clock along with its satisfying script by Latimer prove to do what few films can accomplish: improve upon the author’s original work-filling in necessary blanks and discarding wasted subplots. Actors are given terrific roles where their ability to convincingly portray duplicitousness is put to the test. In other words, Harry Morgan says more with his silent Bill than Sean Young as Susan Atwell ever hopes to with all of her incessant yammering in No Way Out.
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