Jandy Hardesty’s review published on Letterboxd:
I've been meaning to see this one forever, and I'm so glad I finally got around to it. Charles Laughton is of course always worth watching, and he brings a sort of bored but high-strung quality to his character here, a mogul over a bunch of magazines, including Crimeways where our main character (Ray Milland) works. There's a bit of convolution in getting the main plot in motion - I'm not sure I REALLY believed that Milland would waste so much time with this random woman in a bar that he'd miss the train for his all-important vacation with his wife and son. But leaving that aside, everything else in the movie is pretty great.
Noir films usually have a plot hook that's like "really? I gotta see that!" And this is no different - here the hook is Milland is very good at finding people who are trying to hide, better than the police, but this time around he knows that the person he's tasked with finding is himself. Until he can work out the reason Laughton has set him after a man Milland knows (but Laughton does not) is himself, he has to tow the line, simultaneously uncovering and covering up clues to keep everyone guessing.
An extra highlight is Elsa Lanchester, who appeared in a lot of Laughton films but I had no idea she was in this one until she showed up - she plays a cockamamie artist who may hold the clues to the whole thing, and she is kooky and delightful in every scene she's in, including the very last scene in the movie.
Here's how it entered my Flickchart:
The Big Clock > Babes on Broadway
The Big Clock > Ministry of Fear
The Big Clock < Hans Christian Andersen
The Big Clock < Juno
The Big Clock < Aladdin
The Big Clock < Miracle on 34th Street
The Big Clock > The Descendants
The Big Clock < House of Flying Daggers
The Big Clock > Serenity
The Big Clock < Now Voyager
The Big Clock > The Great Gatsby
Final ranking #848 out of 3538