#The big clock imdb movie
Alias Nick Beal has to be, hands down, the most sure-footed movie John Farrow ever directed he never slips in sustaining its spectral look or precarious tone. Finally elected to the statehouse, Mitchell finds that he's sold his soul to the very forces that he had always fought. And every time Mitchell thinks he's compromised his principles for the last time or struck his final dirty bargain, in slithers Milland with another twist of the knife, a brand-new temptation. He enlists the help of bar floozie Audrey Totter, who turns herself into Mitchell's Gal Friday and diverts his affections from his wife (and conscience) Geraldine Wall. Unflappable in his suavity, Milland stays pitchfork-perfect in his scheme to strip Mitchell of his honesty and ideals.
He offers Mitchell the pristine ledgers, from which the mayor can nail down a conviction and propel himself to the governor's mansion trouble is, now he's stuck with the sinister Beal. Ordering Barbados rum (with its voodooish connotations), he introduces himself as Nick Beal, which seems to be the short Americanization of Beelzebub. Mitchell gets a call asking for a mysterious meeting at a waterfront bar, The China Coast Café, where, like a wraith out of the harbor fogs, materializes Ray Milland. But incriminating ledgers detailing the graft of a rival political-machine boss have been burned. Thomas Mitchell, a progressive and muckraking mayor, won't rest easy until he eradicates corruption from his unnamed town. Jordan, Heaven Can Wait, The Devil and Daniel Webster with the grittier conflicts of the big-city exposés in film noir. It's an unusual but successful cross of the supernatural fantasy films popular in the forties like Here Comes Mr. Rarely spotted on TV even by midweek insomniacs, brushed aside even by aficionados of the Hollywood past, Alias Nick Beal is a top-notch movie that puzzlingly languishes in limbo.
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