Film noir is all about time, or the lack of it; fall guys have to race against its inexorable ticking before the hammer of fate crashes down.

Here the hero is literally haunted by time, trapped beneath the watchful eye of a new electronic clock that dominates his boss’ headquarters.

Closely adapted from Kenneth Fearing’s novel of the same name, The Big Clock is a Swiss timepiece of a thriller.

With faultless precision it patiently prepares plot elements in a breezy, light opening half hour, before neatly racking up the tension in the final sixty minutes and climaxing with an audaciously over the top death.

As much screwball comedy as film noir, the movie sits alongside Hitchcock’s wrong man classics as a giddying cocktail of humour and suspense, played to the hilt by a perfect cast.

Not an ounce of fat hangs on a screenplay that guarantees even the smallest event returns to haunt Milland when the hunt is on.

Journeyman director John Farrow shoots Laughton’s threateningly futuristic, art deco HQ with increasingly distorted angles and tight close-up, visually darkening the film as the pressure builds.

The underrated Milland does a decent Cary Grant as a man who won’t let a date with the electric chair spoil a good wisecrack, but the film belongs to Laughton’s villainous magnate: a man so obsessed with time even his speech pattern has the steady rhythm of a second hand.

A capable background cast could have fallen into insignificance, but George Macready is suitably sinister as the odious lackey, while Elsa Lanchester near steals the show as a dotty painter embroiled in the hunt, boasting of a string of husbands and children (amusingly, she and real life husband Laughton were married for thirty-three years, but had no children).

Remade as No Way Out starring Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman, The Big Clock feels as fresh and exciting now as it did back in 1948.

Rob Daniel