GC Film Series - Spring 2001
The Clock ('45)
A soldier on a two-day pass in New York meets a woman under the clock at Penn Station, and while
it ticks away 48 hours he becomes well acquainted with her and the city. Touring the city
together they fall in love and both want to get married, but are hesitant with the realization
that they scarcely know each other and will face a long damaging separation when he goes
overseas. A chance meeting with a friendly milkman and his family helps them come to a decision.
NOTE: If you do not wish to have certain elements of the plot revealed, please wait to read these until after you have seen the film!
[From Jim Johnson (http://www.zianet.com/jjohnson/clock.htm)]:
The U.K. title is Under the Clock. The Clock was Judy Garland's first straight dramatic role (and her only one at MGM). She told an interviewer at the time, "You take your life in your hands, but it's fun to see what you can do. I like taking a crack at something different." The original director was Jack Conway, but he fell ill while filming backgrounds in New York and was replaced by Fred Zinnemann. During the third week of August, with nearly a third of the film completed, Judy felt the original script "hadn't played very well: it was all talk and no action." So, she asked that Zinnemann be replaced by Vincente Minnelli. Hume Cronyn and Connie Gilchrist were originally cast as the milkman and his wife, and Audrey Totter played Alice's roommate. They were replaced by James and Lucille Gleason and Ruth Brady. Minnelli reworked the script to make New York City "the third character" in the story. He also humanized the characters and added humor to the supporting actors, recasting the older couple and Judy's roommate with James Gleason, his wife Lucille, and Ruth Brady. He continued to marvel at Judy later saying, "I would tell her a hundred things while she was being made up, and felt I wasn't getting through to her. Yet, when she got before the cameras, everything was there, all the subtleties and the pathos - she was magnificent".
[From The New York Times]:
A tender and refreshingly simple romantic drama...the atmosphere of the big town has seldom been conveyed more realistically upon the screen...Robert Walker and Judy Garland (who by the way doesn't sing a note) are the principals. The Clock is the kind of picture that leaves one with a warm feeling toward his fellow man, especially towards the young folks who today are trying to crowd a lifetime of happiness into a few fleeting hours.
[By Otis L. Guernsey (The New York Herald Tribune)]:
"A sincere and touching examination of the war-time marriage problem. Miss Garland, who doesn't sing a note in The Clock, works considerable sympathy into her role. She...maintains the impression of variety in the continual boy-girl relationship...She reacts to the ugliness and red tape of a municipal wedding and then keeps the relationship from becoming too sugary when the disappointment is amended.
[By Wanda Hale (The New York Daily News)]:
...The Clock...is the sweetest, most tender comedy-drama yet produced about a soldier and a girl. Judy Garland and Robert Walker are perfectly cast as the modest, sincere girl and the shy, sincere boy. To Vincente Minnelli goes the credit for the film's many appealing qualities. He has directed the love scenes with great tenderness. And the humor he has worked into the plot is so carefully and cleverly done that many scenes without words stand out like animated paintings and cartoons...
[From the Chicago Reader]:
Vincente Minnelli's first nonmusical (1945) is a charming and stylish if somewhat sentimental love story about a soldier (Robert Walker) on a two-day leave in New York who meets and marries an office worker (Judy Garland). Filmed on a studio soundstage with enough expertise to make it seem like a location shoot, the film is appealing largely for its performances and the innocence it projects. (Similar qualities can be found, at a half-century remove, in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.) In addition to Walker and Garland, Keenan Wynn and Moyna Macgill are well used. Screenwriters Robert Nathan and Joseph Schrank adapted a story by Paul and Pauline Gallico.
GC Film Series - Spring 2001
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