By David in TN
Wednesday, August 7, 2019 at 10:19:00 P.M. EDT
TCM’s Film Noir of the Week is on hiatus during August while TCM has its Summer Under the Stars. Each day has a different Hollywood Icon.
On Thursday, August 8, Ava Gardner is the star. At 9:15 p.m. E.T., Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) features Gardner with Edmund O’Brien, Burt Lancaster, Sam Levene, Albert Dekker, and hit men William Conrad and Charles McGraw.
Lancaster in his film debut plays a sap who throws over a nice girl for femme fatale Ava Gardner, leading to his destruction.
The film takes the Ernest Hemingway short story and expands it to a classic noir.
The nice girl is played by Virginia Christine, later Mrs. Olsen in the Folger’s coffee commercials. It’s fun to see a young “Mrs. Olsen” as a late 1930’s girl about town, who marries the Lancaster character’s police detective former friend (Levene).
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TCM's Film Noir of the Week returns this Saturday Night-Sunday Morning at Midnight ET (and 10 am ET Sunday Morning).
This week's entry is The Big Clock (1948), directed by John Farrow, starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, George Macready, and Elsa Lanchester, Rita Johnson, Harry Morgan.
Film Noir Guide: "Milland is on the run (sort of) for a murder committed by his tyrannical boss (Laughton). All of the running takes place in the skyscraper headquarters of Laughton's publishing empire, where Milland manages the true crime magazine. While evading cops, co-workers, and witnesses who can place him with the victim (Johnson) on the night she was killed, Milland comes to believe that it was Laughton, who, in a fit of rage,
bludgeoned his girl friend to death...O'Sullivan plays Milland's impatient wife, tired of his broken promises to spend more time with her and their little boy; Macready is Laughton's sycophantic right-hand man and possibly his gay lover; Lancaster is a wacky artist who has been hired to draw a sketch of the man last seen with the vctim; and Morgan is Laughton's mute bodyguard. More farce than thriller, The big Clock (which refers to a master timepiece that synchronizes all of the clocks in Laughton's organization) is a sardonic and suspenseful look at murder and the dog-eat-dog-world of big business, as seen through the eyes of a self-confessed workaholic. Laughton scores big as the bullying executive with a big ego problem, and Lancaster is delightful as the eccentric artist."
This film may be closer to reality than the Film Noir Guide reviewer realizes. These "true crime reporters" wouldn't go anywhere near a story like the Knoxville Horror.
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