The Clock

(1945)

Studio films made under the Production Code about romance and sex were fraught with representational difficulties. In THE CLOCK, Vincente Minnelli leans into expressions of the unsaid as a guiding principle of storytelling. There are the orgasms suggested by an abnormal amount of sneezing. A litany of objects is shared between the central romantic couple throughout the film, including the sexually symbolic cigarette lighter. The denouement features a scene of post-coital looks which quite literally tell the story as any dialogue they would say could not be spoken. The sequence is a counterpoint to the subtitled double meaning conversations in ANNIE HALL. Such comparisons remind us that this is the prototypical romantic comedy. The unsaid extends to political subtext. A hopeless and womanizing drunk in a diner acts out a subversive critique of the cranks on The House On Unamerican Activities Committee. Bureaucracy and urban alienation lend an undercurrent of fascism to a city in a nation engaged in fighting such ideology. Another staple of the romantic comedy is the art of the one-scene character and there is a succession of them here to fill out the world. This was one of the originators of a sub-genre of films about the ongoing life in a 24-hour city in a condensed time period. Couching this idea in the language of love stories made possible films such as AFTER HOURS and SOMETHING WILD. A sense of interlocking public and private spaces has never been so powerfully rendered as it is witnessed here.