The Big Clock

George Stroud edits a crime magazine. His boss, the publishing magnate Earl Janoth, murders his own mistress and decides to hang it on the unidentified man seen with her that night. The difficulty is that the man is Stroud, and Janoth puts him in charge of the search. That is the whole idea: a man hunting himself and doing everything he can not to succeed. As the net tightens the building is sealed, witnesses are brought in, and Stroud has to slow down his own investigation from the inside. John Farrow directed, from Kenneth Fearing's 1946 novel. Ray Milland plays the editor and Charles Laughton the boss. Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester takes the most entertaining supporting part in it as an eccentric painter. Its flaw is that the tension, superbly constructed, is resolved on the cheap, and the women are given very little room. Who it is for: lovers of classic noir and cleverly built suspense. Who it is not for: anyone expecting modern pacing.