Vincente Minnelli’s wartime romance The Clock marked Judy Garland’s first (and only) straight dramatic film during her MGM tenure, and it’s a memorable one: a charmer about two innocents who fall in love in New York City over a couple of days.
The Production: 4/5
Vincente Minnelli’s wartime romance The Clock marked Judy Garland’s first (and only) straight dramatic film during her MGM tenure, and it’s a memorable one: a sweet charmer about two innocents who meet and fall in love in New York City during a soldier’s two-day layover. A character study of a couple surrounded by a city full of lovable eccentrics, The Clock quietly but expertly weaves its spell with a slow and steady calculated ease.
New York secretary Alice Maybery (Judy Garland) loses a shoe heel in Penn Station that’s retrieved by lovable goof Corporal Joe Allen (Robert Walker), and the two make an afternoon and evening of seeing various sights around the city getting to know each other through their interactions with a number of unusual New Yorkers: milkman Al Henry (James Gleason) and his affable wife Em (Lucile Gleason) and a drunk in a luncheonette (Keenan Wynn), among others. By their second day together the two realize they’re in love and want to get married, but time’s running out before Joe has to return to his regiment in Maryland before shipping out to Europe.
The screenplay by Robert Nathan and Joseph Schrank is based on a story by Paul and Pauline Gallico who specialized in charming, eccentric tales, and the spirited, inventive direction by Vincente Minnelli complements the slender narrative. By taking his camera up and away on occasion, he dwarfs our young lovebirds who are at the mercy of New York City’s whims: sometimes offering kindly support and other times throwing obstructions in their path (separating them in a notoriously crowded subway and especially during the frenzied late film dash for the couple to get married despite a three-day wait that the couple doesn’t have). But Minnelli is smart enough to revel in the good times, too, most notably a fun-filled breakfast the couple shares with a milkman they’ve aided and his good-natured, chat-filled wife in the movie’s most delectable scene. Being shot in Hollywood but taking place in New York, there is a lot of second unit work to bring one coast to the other (a montage of New York’s notable skyscrapers, avenues, and parks) mixed with some effective rear projection to place the couple in Central Park and MGM’s legendary production designers who construct a massive Penn Station set to open and close the movie, a New York subway platform at Grand Central Station, and some nifty corners of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
After she had been allowed to grow up playing young adults in For Me and My Gal and Presenting Lily Mars, Judy Garland was mortified at first to be assigned a teenager again in Meet Me in St. Louis, and while she eventually came to enjoy making that film and be proud of it, The Clock was a way to placate the ambitious young actress allowing her finally to leave her teen years behind and act in a film that didn’t require her to sing a note (though it must have been tempting for the producer to have Garland fulfill milkman Al’s desire to hear “That’s How I Need You”). Garland is wistful and beguiling throughout the movie, and her delayed reaction to their nightmarishly rushed marriage ceremony rings completely true. Robert Walker was going through a very difficult time in his life during the making of The Clock, but he manages to hide his anguish with an affable, innocently warm and tender performance that ranks as one of his best. James Gleason steals his scenes as the friendly milkman, and that’s his real-life wife Lucile as his screen wife doing her own bit of scene stealing as the couple spout hilarious barbs at one another. Keenan Wynn does an almost four-minute drunken monologue on the rights of an American citizen in a diner scene (where Angela Lansbury’s real-life mother Moyna MacGill steals focus as a matron who segues from daintily eating her lunch to shoveling the food in with both hands). In the only other role of note, Ruth Brady brazenly plays Judy’s roommate who thinks she’s foolhardy to make any plans with a soldier who’s being shipped overseas (World War II was still raging when the movie was shot). If you look fast enough, you’ll see producer Arthur Freed lighting Robert Walker’s cigarette, music master Roger Edens playing the piano in a restaurant, and director Vincente Minnelli leaving the diner when Walker and Garland walk in.
Video: 5/5
3D Rating: NA
The film’s original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37:1 is faithfully rendered in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. It’s a glorious presentation of the black and white original with inky black levels throughout and crisp, appealing whites at appropriate times. Sharpness and detail are wonderfully on point. The movie has been divided into 32 chapters.
Audio: 5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound mix is clearly of its era, but it sounds strong and clear. Dialogue has been professionally recorded and is always discernible while George Bassman’s background music and a symphony of sound effects (one priceless moment has the couple listening to the sounds of New York at night, and it’s rapturous) are beautifully combined into a single track.
Special Features: 3/5
Hollywood Scout (7:42, HD): a Pete Smith Specialty
The Screwy Truant (7:02, HD): animated Tex Avery cartoon
Lux Radio Theater (47:21): radio adaptation of The Clock with Judy Garland and John Hodiak
Theatrical Trailer (2:11, HD)
Overall: 4/5
Vincente Minnelli’s The Clock is a wispy World War II romance with a non-singing Judy Garland and Robert Walker at their absolute best. The Warner Archive Blu-ray is another sterling effort by the company bringing pristine picture and sound to a film that deserves to be better known. Highly recommended!
The Clock [Blu-ray]
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Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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