“The strangest and most savage manhunt in history!” is the tag line from The Big Clock. The Paramount Pictures logo appears onscreen backed with an ominous Victor Young thriller score. The camera observes New York skyscrapers late at night and travels to the Janoth Publications Building, swoops to the top of a multisided clock, and inside to a dark corridor where a man gets off an elevator and runs inside a room that houses the guts of this enormous timepiece. The man is George Stroud (Ray Milland), reporter for Crimeways magazine, a Janoth publication. Once inside the room, he tells us in a voice-over that he is now a hunted man, but thirty-six hours earlier, his life was quite fine indeed.

Stroud is the editor of a magazine whose very essence depends upon the entrapment of criminals and getting the scoop on their crimes before the law steps in. He is wrapping up a sensational manhunt when he announces to Steve Hagan (George Macready), Janoth’s right-hand man, that he is quitting his job and going on his long-overdue honeymoon with his wife, Georgette (Maureen O’Sullivan), and their five-year-old son. Georgette visits George in his office to confirm their meeting at the railroad station, and George says nothing will stop him.

After finishing his day at Janoth Publications, George has a few drinks at a local reporters’ hangout; meets Pauline York (beautifully played by petite, blonde Rita Johnson), who is Earl Janoth’s mistress; misses his train; and goes out on the town with Pauline. She had overheard

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