TIMELESS SUSPENSE IN ‘BIG CLOCK’

“The Big Clock” (1948), which has been reworked as the just-released “No Way Out,” screens Sunday at 8 p.m. in Melnitz Theater as part of the UCLA Film Archives’ celebration of Paramount’s 75th birthday. The original, which Jonathan Latimer adapted from the Kenneth Fearing novel, holds up excellently as a taut, witty thriller and involves an innocent man trying to avoid becoming the prime suspect in a murder while pursuing the actual killer. So timeless is this premise for sure-fire suspense that the makers of “No Way Out” were able to transpose “The Big Clock’s” key setting, a Luce-like Manhattan magazine empire, to the Pentagon and wind up with some pertinent commentary on Irangate mentality in the process.

Crisply directed by John Farrow, “The Big Clock” is in the Hitchcock tradition of letting us in on who did it up front. Megalomanical publisher Charles Laughton kills his chic, calculating mistress (Rita Johnson) in a fit of rage, and one of his top editors (Ray Milland), has had the bad luck to have been the last person to be seen with her. There’s much that’s impressive about “The Big Clock” beyond its enduring suspense: its beautifully modulated black and white cinematography, its clean, handsome production design and Edith Head’s superbly understated adaptation of the New Look, topped, quite literally, by some exceptionally attractive hats.

Milland comes across most personably as a man who is as bright as he is charming, for in order to save his life, Milland’s character must be breathtakingly fast-thinking. Maureen O’Sullivan (who was Mrs. Farrow in private life) is his understandably perplexed wife. George Macready is terrific as Laughton’s ambiguous aide, but time has not been so kind to either Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester (cast as a dotty artist), who are fun to watch but are shameless, upstaging hams.

Neither Graham Greene nor Fritz Lang, who admired each other, were pleased with Lang’s film of Greene’s “Ministry of Fear” (1945), which screens tonight in Melnitz at 8. Lang was so unhappy with producer Seton I. Miller’s adaptation, he tried to get out of doing the film. Yet “Ministry of Fear” isn’t as bad as this sounds, and is a fine example of a great director making the best of some flat dialogue and a miscast heroine (the All-American Marjorie Reynolds, a delight in “Holiday Inn,” but out of her element as an Austrian refugee). Milland stars as a man who leaves an insane asylum in wartime England--he had been convicted of the mercy killing of his wife; technically, he was innocent--only to be plunged into some Nazi spy intrigue. Whenever possible, Lang brings visual flair and his sense of fate and paranoia to bear upon “Ministry of Fear,” but this is minor Lang. For the full schedule: (213) 825-2581.

Mitchell Leisen’s “Hands Across the Table” (1935), which screens Friday in Bing Theater in the County Museum of Art’s portion of the Paramount tribute, is an exquisite romantic comedy with a tinge of melancholy that offers ample proof of why Carole Lombard remains such an ideal for young actresses. Lombard had it all: beauty, brains, a wicked sense of humor, a warm personality and an innate gallantry that made her very special indeed. In short, she comes across as a gorgeous, sexy good sport.

In this classic ‘30s tale, which bears Ernst Lubitsch’s touch as Paramount’s production head, she’s a manicurist teamed with a penniless playboy (Fred MacMurray, handsome, jaunty and perfect foil for her) who tell each other they’re determined to marry for money and not to fall in love with each other. Ralph Bellamy is Lombard’s wise and selfless best pal, a crippled former aviator. Norman Krasna, Vincent Lawrence and Herbert Fields’ witty script was based on a story by Vina Delmar. “Hands Across the Table” follows “I’m No Angel” and “Anything Goes,” which screens at 6 p.m. Information: (213) 857-6031 or 857-6010.

UCLA Film Archives’ Jewish Film Festival continues Saturday at 8 p.m. with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s film of Rene Kalisky’s play “Falsch.” Bruno Cremer has the title role as a dying man arriving in a plane in the middle of the night at a deserted airport, where he will be greeted by the ghosts of family and loved ones, most of whom he has not seen since he fled Berlin 40 years earlier, in 1938, and most of whom died in concentration camps. One can imagine that on the stage this psycho-drama of Jewish guilt, fear and recrimination might be cathartic; on the screen, it’s merely tedious and oppressive.