by Joyless Creatures Staff
Christian Marclay's The Clock began its worldwide tour in 2010, bouncing around galleries and museums in Europe and the US. After four years of waiting, it's finally made it to the Walker Art Center.
The Clock is a 24-hour installation piece made entirely of found footage, much of which is taken from feature films both familiar and obscure. Marclay has assembled a functioning clock, synched to the local time wherever it plays, that uses film clips that correspond to whatever time it is in real life. While many environments seek to remove our sense of time (think casinos and nightclubs, whose lack of clocks and natural light lulls visitors into a secure calm in which they can spend unknown hours frittering their money away), The Clock does the opposite. A moment never passes at which you don't know what time it is.
The Clock is a 24-hour installation piece made entirely of found footage, much of which is taken from feature films both familiar and obscure. Marclay has assembled a functioning clock, synched to the local time wherever it plays, that uses film clips that correspond to whatever time it is in real life. While many environments seek to remove our sense of time (think casinos and nightclubs, whose lack of clocks and natural light lulls visitors into a secure calm in which they can spend unknown hours frittering their money away), The Clock does the opposite. A moment never passes at which you don't know what time it is.
What is so surprising about this piece is borne out of Marclay's care as a curator and editor. The shots he has chosen draw you into a hypnotic, beautiful state. While a collection of shots all around a similar theme (time) may sound like an uninspired college experiment, The Clock is mesmerizing and addicting. Planning to sit down for one hour might turn into three or five or seven, as watching the time-image unfold before us is so enticing. As Zadie Smith wrote in The New York Review of Books:
| "[The Clock] is neither bad nor good, but sublime, maybe the greatest film you have ever seen, and you will need to come back in the morning, in the evening, and late at night, abandoning everything else, packing a sleeping bag, and decamping to the Paula Cooper Gallery until sunrise." |
And we at Joyless Creatures decided to do just that. While the film is playing during gallery hours through August 25th, there have been several 24-hour screenings, and we did our best to cover most of those hours. Below are our hourly reports on the labyrinthine cinematic undertaking--we made it through 12 of the 24 hours. For those of you who want to fill in the blanks, there are still three more late-night screenings. We'll see you there.
- August 8–9: Friday, 11 am–Saturday, 5 pm
- August 23–24: Saturday, 11 am–Sunday, 5 pm
- Monday, August 25, 5 pm–12 midnight
11:00am
by Geoffrey Stueven
The minutes before 11 a.m. wind down with images of women: crying, bathing. A dead woman, and Deborah Kerr in a graveyard. When the hour strikes, they’re forgotten, and suddenly everyone’s running late. Harry and Ron have missed the train to Hogwarts. An impatient Marlon Brando rushes Sophia Loren through her breakfast. Others have no sense of time. Nancy Spungeon wonders if it’s Tuesday or Thursday while Sid Vicious opens a window and squints into the pale light. Ryan O’Neal waits at the airport, early perhaps, but someone’s right on time: It’s Jason Statham! He commands his team to “cut the power” at a subway station, triggering the alarms of late sleepers: Nick Nolte, first, and later Billy Bob Thornton, who smashes his clock against the wall after his 11:15 wake-up. Throughout the hour, Paul Newman stays in bed, indulgently, Susan Hayward awaits her cruel, elaborate execution, and Johnny Cash holds a woman at gunpoint, while in a different room his associates or adversaries count down the minutes to her demise. One of them suggests they watch the clock. A cut to show the seconds ticking, and a joke for Marclay: an extended chunk of programming accounted for, in the waiting? (No, other scenes intervene while they wait.) Finally Cash announces, “Your time’s run out, lady,” but before he can shoot, a Hardy-less Laurel blunders across the screen. Promptly at 11:30, Cagney shouts, “Let’s get going!” But the whistlers of The Breakfast Club challenge the context-smashing nature of their surroundings; suddenly it’s an AFI highlight reel. So, too, when Michael Douglas’s disgruntled everyman can’t get breakfast at McDonald’s. Less familiar: From a timeless way station in a Twilight Zone scenario, Adam Arkin announces to his companion that she’ll soon hear “the sound of actual time approaching.” Just before it arrives, Peter Fonda tosses his watch to the dirt, in Easy Rider. Christopher Walken tells the full story of the watch, in Pulp Fiction, and a man in an empty, amber-tinted office threatens “mankind’s work consumed in the fire.” The camera pans to the clock—a break; a pair of clips bring together Delon and Dicaprio, at last—and continues to pan past two editions of the newspaper, one of them bearing tomorrow’s headline: WORLD SAVED. WORLD DOOMED. Run Lola Run soundtracks the Little Tramp and a few duels in Western streets, and just before high noon a fast food worker watches the clock, wondering what to do.
by Geoffrey Stueven
The minutes before 11 a.m. wind down with images of women: crying, bathing. A dead woman, and Deborah Kerr in a graveyard. When the hour strikes, they’re forgotten, and suddenly everyone’s running late. Harry and Ron have missed the train to Hogwarts. An impatient Marlon Brando rushes Sophia Loren through her breakfast. Others have no sense of time. Nancy Spungeon wonders if it’s Tuesday or Thursday while Sid Vicious opens a window and squints into the pale light. Ryan O’Neal waits at the airport, early perhaps, but someone’s right on time: It’s Jason Statham! He commands his team to “cut the power” at a subway station, triggering the alarms of late sleepers: Nick Nolte, first, and later Billy Bob Thornton, who smashes his clock against the wall after his 11:15 wake-up. Throughout the hour, Paul Newman stays in bed, indulgently, Susan Hayward awaits her cruel, elaborate execution, and Johnny Cash holds a woman at gunpoint, while in a different room his associates or adversaries count down the minutes to her demise. One of them suggests they watch the clock. A cut to show the seconds ticking, and a joke for Marclay: an extended chunk of programming accounted for, in the waiting? (No, other scenes intervene while they wait.) Finally Cash announces, “Your time’s run out, lady,” but before he can shoot, a Hardy-less Laurel blunders across the screen. Promptly at 11:30, Cagney shouts, “Let’s get going!” But the whistlers of The Breakfast Club challenge the context-smashing nature of their surroundings; suddenly it’s an AFI highlight reel. So, too, when Michael Douglas’s disgruntled everyman can’t get breakfast at McDonald’s. Less familiar: From a timeless way station in a Twilight Zone scenario, Adam Arkin announces to his companion that she’ll soon hear “the sound of actual time approaching.” Just before it arrives, Peter Fonda tosses his watch to the dirt, in Easy Rider. Christopher Walken tells the full story of the watch, in Pulp Fiction, and a man in an empty, amber-tinted office threatens “mankind’s work consumed in the fire.” The camera pans to the clock—a break; a pair of clips bring together Delon and Dicaprio, at last—and continues to pan past two editions of the newspaper, one of them bearing tomorrow’s headline: WORLD SAVED. WORLD DOOMED. Run Lola Run soundtracks the Little Tramp and a few duels in Western streets, and just before high noon a fast food worker watches the clock, wondering what to do.
12:00pm
by Geoffrey Stueven
The Hunchback of Notre Dame tolls his bell, announcing the hour of the lunch break, the shift exchange, the interruption of services. A man is let in at the front door of the bank, to be told, “Another minute and you’d have been too late.” The Twilight Zone’s glasses-wearing clerk closes his window and walks off happily to his lunchtime reading. At 12:04, according to the classroom clock, A Single Man lectures fear. Some time later, in diffuse, indeterminate afternoon light, Hamlet soliloquizes poor Yorick, remembers the place on the skull where the lips used to hang. What time is it? Clocks that aren’t synced with the ones in adjacent shots suggest a flaw in Marclay’s master clock, but people quickly reset them to the correct time. One man, upon doing so, imagines the establishment of a “school for backwards boys.” Elsewhere, homeless men sleep on benches. Lukas Haas’s brilliant student, in the office of an advisor, rages against time: “It’s cutting off our heads!” Equally fraught: Steaks for lunch, a source of conflict in Moonstruck and Mommie Dearest, and particularly the latter, in which Joan Crawford (the character) imperiously observes her daughter’s table manners. Clocks continue ticking after the apocalypse: The Twilight Zone’s reading man appears again in the rubble of civilization, with “time enough at last” for his books (his ultimate fate unseen). Owen Wilson gets a new job, and can start as soon as possible. He should come in the next morning at 7 a.m. (committed viewers can perhaps verify the appointment. Does he make it in at 7?). At 12:35, after her supermarket theft, Wendy gets fingerprinted, the invasive process filling the frame; at 12:40, Ray Milland can’t get a drink, and learns the bars are closed for Yom Kippur; sometime in between, a man drops through the floor of Pierrepoint’s gallows and the rope snaps his neck. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s high school sleuth in Brick places a call from a phone booth, and Joan Crawford (the actress) picks up. James Bond and James Mason contend, separately, with machines gone berserk. How will Bond survive the turbo setting on his exercise machine, triggered by his villain? Throughout the hour, Kurtwood Smith has been waiting in an office, nervously watching the clock. Just now, he’s running through corridors, announcing, “I don’t want to live forever.” The washed out face of a clock would show the time to be 1 p.m., if legible, and a terrible car crash punctuates the new hour. Then back to Smith, in the office, under the clock, shedding a single tear.
by Geoffrey Stueven
The Hunchback of Notre Dame tolls his bell, announcing the hour of the lunch break, the shift exchange, the interruption of services. A man is let in at the front door of the bank, to be told, “Another minute and you’d have been too late.” The Twilight Zone’s glasses-wearing clerk closes his window and walks off happily to his lunchtime reading. At 12:04, according to the classroom clock, A Single Man lectures fear. Some time later, in diffuse, indeterminate afternoon light, Hamlet soliloquizes poor Yorick, remembers the place on the skull where the lips used to hang. What time is it? Clocks that aren’t synced with the ones in adjacent shots suggest a flaw in Marclay’s master clock, but people quickly reset them to the correct time. One man, upon doing so, imagines the establishment of a “school for backwards boys.” Elsewhere, homeless men sleep on benches. Lukas Haas’s brilliant student, in the office of an advisor, rages against time: “It’s cutting off our heads!” Equally fraught: Steaks for lunch, a source of conflict in Moonstruck and Mommie Dearest, and particularly the latter, in which Joan Crawford (the character) imperiously observes her daughter’s table manners. Clocks continue ticking after the apocalypse: The Twilight Zone’s reading man appears again in the rubble of civilization, with “time enough at last” for his books (his ultimate fate unseen). Owen Wilson gets a new job, and can start as soon as possible. He should come in the next morning at 7 a.m. (committed viewers can perhaps verify the appointment. Does he make it in at 7?). At 12:35, after her supermarket theft, Wendy gets fingerprinted, the invasive process filling the frame; at 12:40, Ray Milland can’t get a drink, and learns the bars are closed for Yom Kippur; sometime in between, a man drops through the floor of Pierrepoint’s gallows and the rope snaps his neck. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s high school sleuth in Brick places a call from a phone booth, and Joan Crawford (the actress) picks up. James Bond and James Mason contend, separately, with machines gone berserk. How will Bond survive the turbo setting on his exercise machine, triggered by his villain? Throughout the hour, Kurtwood Smith has been waiting in an office, nervously watching the clock. Just now, he’s running through corridors, announcing, “I don’t want to live forever.” The washed out face of a clock would show the time to be 1 p.m., if legible, and a terrible car crash punctuates the new hour. Then back to Smith, in the office, under the clock, shedding a single tear.
1:00pm
by Matt Levine
One of Christian Marclay’s most impressive feats is The Clock’s dynamism, which achieves an almost musical sense of rhythm and timing—the film can switch from up-tempo excitement to patient quietude in a matter of seconds. This is especially apparent at the beginning of this hour, as one o’clock starts off with both a bang and a whimper—a car accident from Adaptation catches our attention, then in the subsequent solemn fallout decrescendos into an image of the priest crying in Bergman’s Winter Light. Even with no clocks apparent in the frame, Marclay has a keen sense of the passage of time—images of a bustling city street on a hot summer day evoke early afternoon, and sand falling in an hourglass cleverly fills the periods not occupied by onscreen clocks. Nick of Time appears repeatedly, which is a welcome sight for fans of Johnny Depp’s guilty-pleasure 1995 thriller—the 1:30 assassination deadline in that movie makes for some exciting montages. Marclay also wittily uses a variety of motifs to organize seemingly disparate footage; for example, the highlight of this hour might be a sequence of air-travel that conjoins scenes from Jackie Brown and Blind Chance (my favorite Tarantino and Kieslowski movies, respectively). The meticulous editing also manages to introduce anomalous actors into recognizable films—for example, Vincent Price seems to make an appearance in the sordid Baby Doll and Susan Sarandon has a pseudo-cameo in Fitzcarraldo, observing one of Klaus Kinski’s freak-out sessions.
by Matt Levine
One of Christian Marclay’s most impressive feats is The Clock’s dynamism, which achieves an almost musical sense of rhythm and timing—the film can switch from up-tempo excitement to patient quietude in a matter of seconds. This is especially apparent at the beginning of this hour, as one o’clock starts off with both a bang and a whimper—a car accident from Adaptation catches our attention, then in the subsequent solemn fallout decrescendos into an image of the priest crying in Bergman’s Winter Light. Even with no clocks apparent in the frame, Marclay has a keen sense of the passage of time—images of a bustling city street on a hot summer day evoke early afternoon, and sand falling in an hourglass cleverly fills the periods not occupied by onscreen clocks. Nick of Time appears repeatedly, which is a welcome sight for fans of Johnny Depp’s guilty-pleasure 1995 thriller—the 1:30 assassination deadline in that movie makes for some exciting montages. Marclay also wittily uses a variety of motifs to organize seemingly disparate footage; for example, the highlight of this hour might be a sequence of air-travel that conjoins scenes from Jackie Brown and Blind Chance (my favorite Tarantino and Kieslowski movies, respectively). The meticulous editing also manages to introduce anomalous actors into recognizable films—for example, Vincent Price seems to make an appearance in the sordid Baby Doll and Susan Sarandon has a pseudo-cameo in Fitzcarraldo, observing one of Klaus Kinski’s freak-out sessions.
2:00pm
by Matt Levine
Much of this hour is surprisingly melancholy, as the hour starts with rain-soaked scenes on city streets and includes shots from Fanny and Alexander and Interiors (including a lengthy, silent scene in which the film’s three sisters mourn their father at his funeral). That said, Marclay’s sense of humor is also on display immediately, as elements of the found footage—a moving truck belonging to Time Movers, a restaurant named the Tick Tock Diner—emphasize the film’s time-based conceit. Two of the 90’s greatest, weirdest detective shows, The X-Files and Twin Peaks, make prominent appearances (with a platter of donuts even included in the latter). But the high point must be a bipolar conflation of Safety Last!—probably the most recognizable moment of the hour, as we watch Harold Lloyd hang precariously from those clock hands—and Jason Statham in The Transporter. The black-and-white real-world setting of Lloyd’s 1927 comedy couldn’t be further from the artificial golden sheen of The Transporter, one of many moments in which two seemingly incompatible images from movie history actually seem destined to belong next to each other.
by Matt Levine
Much of this hour is surprisingly melancholy, as the hour starts with rain-soaked scenes on city streets and includes shots from Fanny and Alexander and Interiors (including a lengthy, silent scene in which the film’s three sisters mourn their father at his funeral). That said, Marclay’s sense of humor is also on display immediately, as elements of the found footage—a moving truck belonging to Time Movers, a restaurant named the Tick Tock Diner—emphasize the film’s time-based conceit. Two of the 90’s greatest, weirdest detective shows, The X-Files and Twin Peaks, make prominent appearances (with a platter of donuts even included in the latter). But the high point must be a bipolar conflation of Safety Last!—probably the most recognizable moment of the hour, as we watch Harold Lloyd hang precariously from those clock hands—and Jason Statham in The Transporter. The black-and-white real-world setting of Lloyd’s 1927 comedy couldn’t be further from the artificial golden sheen of The Transporter, one of many moments in which two seemingly incompatible images from movie history actually seem destined to belong next to each other.
3:00pm
by Matt Levine
The Beatles’ Help!, Gone With the Wind, Great Expectations, Ordet, Bigger Than Life, Coffee and Cigarettes, and Monsieur Verdoux all appear during this hour—a parade of titles which, in my opinion, range from merely great to all-time masterpieces. The Gone With the Wind moment is especially interesting in conveying one of the movie’s unfortunate racial stereotypes, one of many thematic connections to a real-world history that expand The Clock beyond a mere formalist gimmick. As often happens, though, these well-known titles are paired with obscure and confounding nuggets from the wide world of film which have to be seen to believed—for example, a musical number featuring Jack Nicholson (which I’m sure some viewers will recognize, though it baffled me) and a Japanese movie with a gigantic clock filling up the background. At 3:42, a man in a French suspense movie monitors his pulse and records the time, followed by a scene of Jeff Bridges doing the same exact thing in an American remake. There are frequent disorienting POV shots in which a character in one film looks at a clock obviously lifted from another movie (often switching abruptly from color to black-and-white or vice versa)—an example of how Marclay’s canny editing places two discordant fragments of cinema history in dialogue with each other. But the highlight of the hour is probably a mostly silent shot of Jesse and Celeste walking up a staircase in Before Sunset—another film I love, which (more importantly) is just as time-based, in its own way, as The Clock. By including temporally-driven films such as this (or Coffee and Cigarettes, a movie about the idle passing of time), Marclay brilliantly reminds us that all of cinema relies upon the eternal passing of time for its emotional effect.
by Matt Levine
The Beatles’ Help!, Gone With the Wind, Great Expectations, Ordet, Bigger Than Life, Coffee and Cigarettes, and Monsieur Verdoux all appear during this hour—a parade of titles which, in my opinion, range from merely great to all-time masterpieces. The Gone With the Wind moment is especially interesting in conveying one of the movie’s unfortunate racial stereotypes, one of many thematic connections to a real-world history that expand The Clock beyond a mere formalist gimmick. As often happens, though, these well-known titles are paired with obscure and confounding nuggets from the wide world of film which have to be seen to believed—for example, a musical number featuring Jack Nicholson (which I’m sure some viewers will recognize, though it baffled me) and a Japanese movie with a gigantic clock filling up the background. At 3:42, a man in a French suspense movie monitors his pulse and records the time, followed by a scene of Jeff Bridges doing the same exact thing in an American remake. There are frequent disorienting POV shots in which a character in one film looks at a clock obviously lifted from another movie (often switching abruptly from color to black-and-white or vice versa)—an example of how Marclay’s canny editing places two discordant fragments of cinema history in dialogue with each other. But the highlight of the hour is probably a mostly silent shot of Jesse and Celeste walking up a staircase in Before Sunset—another film I love, which (more importantly) is just as time-based, in its own way, as The Clock. By including temporally-driven films such as this (or Coffee and Cigarettes, a movie about the idle passing of time), Marclay brilliantly reminds us that all of cinema relies upon the eternal passing of time for its emotional effect.
4:00pm
by Matt Levine
A vigorous fast-paced montage marks the beginning of this hour, including action sequences from a Hitchcock thriller (Saboteur, if I remember rightly) and Red Eye. Around 4:15, sequences from Wait Until Dark, Rosemary’s Baby, In the Mood for Love, and All or Nothing segue somberly into each other (the cut between the latter two images is especially powerful), only to proceed to a ludicrous and explicit sex scene at 4:20. (The kids in the Burnet Gallery seemed to enjoy The Clock for the most part, but I noticed several families scampering to the exits during this scene.) My favorite moment in one of Truffaut’s greatest films, Small Change, dominates the 4:30 mark, followed by one of Marclay’s most virtuoso edits: an enormous explosion smash-cutting to a bright-red flower petal drifting quietly onto a table. This is one of the moments that prove Marclay to be much more than an extensive researcher and puzzle-maker; this beautiful cut is one of the most astounding and original edits you’ll see in any movie this year. A well-known moment from The Natural occurs at about 4:45—Robert Redford slams a home-run into the stadium clock (an unbearably sappy moment in the movie itself, though it’s a welcome variation here)—only to move on to a lame Ed Asner comedy and a great shot from Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There? (another moment of beautiful schizophrenia). The end of the hour is organized around a closing-time theme, including a scene from About Schmidt (in which Jack Nicholson’s retiring character views his empty office one last time) that turns a single instant from a terrible movie into a powerfully bittersweet moment. Best of all, though, is the train-station scene from Casablanca, appearing at 4:57. Bogey waits eagerly for Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa to show up, only to have Sam deliver a letter from her, its ink bleeding in the rain. It’s a beloved moment from an undisputed classic, vividly conveying Marclay’s love for an eclectic cinematic past that amounts to a voluminous photo-album occupying our collective movie-going memory.
by Matt Levine
A vigorous fast-paced montage marks the beginning of this hour, including action sequences from a Hitchcock thriller (Saboteur, if I remember rightly) and Red Eye. Around 4:15, sequences from Wait Until Dark, Rosemary’s Baby, In the Mood for Love, and All or Nothing segue somberly into each other (the cut between the latter two images is especially powerful), only to proceed to a ludicrous and explicit sex scene at 4:20. (The kids in the Burnet Gallery seemed to enjoy The Clock for the most part, but I noticed several families scampering to the exits during this scene.) My favorite moment in one of Truffaut’s greatest films, Small Change, dominates the 4:30 mark, followed by one of Marclay’s most virtuoso edits: an enormous explosion smash-cutting to a bright-red flower petal drifting quietly onto a table. This is one of the moments that prove Marclay to be much more than an extensive researcher and puzzle-maker; this beautiful cut is one of the most astounding and original edits you’ll see in any movie this year. A well-known moment from The Natural occurs at about 4:45—Robert Redford slams a home-run into the stadium clock (an unbearably sappy moment in the movie itself, though it’s a welcome variation here)—only to move on to a lame Ed Asner comedy and a great shot from Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There? (another moment of beautiful schizophrenia). The end of the hour is organized around a closing-time theme, including a scene from About Schmidt (in which Jack Nicholson’s retiring character views his empty office one last time) that turns a single instant from a terrible movie into a powerfully bittersweet moment. Best of all, though, is the train-station scene from Casablanca, appearing at 4:57. Bogey waits eagerly for Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa to show up, only to have Sam deliver a letter from her, its ink bleeding in the rain. It’s a beloved moment from an undisputed classic, vividly conveying Marclay’s love for an eclectic cinematic past that amounts to a voluminous photo-album occupying our collective movie-going memory.
7:00pm
by Daniel Getahun
The primetime slot in The Clock is announced by none other than the voice of God (Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty), and a minute later it’s ironically Freeman again who tells Kevin Spacey the time in Se7en. The hour marks the transition to evening and its accompanied activities: working late, running late, getting ready to go out for the night, and even the first after-dark crimes. An abandoned after-dinner cigarette in an ashtray (conveniently located next to a clock) makes several appearances as it burns out over the course of five minutes. At 7:20 PM, Steve Martin calls home to tell his wife his flight’s been delayed, not knowing the Thanksgiving travel nightmare ahead of him. At 7:30 PM, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman prepare to head out for the evening in the first scene of Eyes Wide Shut. In one of three appearances by James Bond during the hour, Daniel Craig also suits up for a critical poker game in Casino Royale. Meanwhile Sean Connery fixes a vodka on the rocks, and at around 7:45 PM, Roger Moore dispatches Chang by throwing him through a clock tower to his death on a baby grand piano: “Play it again, Sam.”
by Daniel Getahun
The primetime slot in The Clock is announced by none other than the voice of God (Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty), and a minute later it’s ironically Freeman again who tells Kevin Spacey the time in Se7en. The hour marks the transition to evening and its accompanied activities: working late, running late, getting ready to go out for the night, and even the first after-dark crimes. An abandoned after-dinner cigarette in an ashtray (conveniently located next to a clock) makes several appearances as it burns out over the course of five minutes. At 7:20 PM, Steve Martin calls home to tell his wife his flight’s been delayed, not knowing the Thanksgiving travel nightmare ahead of him. At 7:30 PM, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman prepare to head out for the evening in the first scene of Eyes Wide Shut. In one of three appearances by James Bond during the hour, Daniel Craig also suits up for a critical poker game in Casino Royale. Meanwhile Sean Connery fixes a vodka on the rocks, and at around 7:45 PM, Roger Moore dispatches Chang by throwing him through a clock tower to his death on a baby grand piano: “Play it again, Sam.”
8:00pm
by Daniel Getahun
By 8:00 PM people have settled into their evening activities, at home or out on the town. Jack Lemmon is furious at Walter Matthau in the Odd Couple, scolding him for arriving home late for their double-date and the dinner Lemmon’s “been slaving over since 5:00 this afternoon!” Dozens of theatre scenes populate the hour, from The Apartment (Lemmon again, realizing Shirley MacLaine has stood him up) to Moonstruck (the mere sight of Nicolas Cage eliciting laughs in the screening room). Pocket watches also appear with curious frequency throughout the hour, suggested a lot of men in suits for various occasions. There’s otherwise a lot of uneventful sitting and waiting during this mid-evening period, but after the kids are put to bed at around 8:30 PM, things briefly get interesting. Naomi Watts and her family are challenged to bet that they have only 12 hours to live in Funny Games, and after John C. Reilly tucks into a lonely bed at 8:43 PM, Anthony Hopkins adds the final seasoning to Ray Liotta’s sizzling brain stir fry in Hannibal. The scenes suggest foreboding developments into the late night hours, but 9:00 PM arrives more with a whimper than a bang.
by Daniel Getahun
By 8:00 PM people have settled into their evening activities, at home or out on the town. Jack Lemmon is furious at Walter Matthau in the Odd Couple, scolding him for arriving home late for their double-date and the dinner Lemmon’s “been slaving over since 5:00 this afternoon!” Dozens of theatre scenes populate the hour, from The Apartment (Lemmon again, realizing Shirley MacLaine has stood him up) to Moonstruck (the mere sight of Nicolas Cage eliciting laughs in the screening room). Pocket watches also appear with curious frequency throughout the hour, suggested a lot of men in suits for various occasions. There’s otherwise a lot of uneventful sitting and waiting during this mid-evening period, but after the kids are put to bed at around 8:30 PM, things briefly get interesting. Naomi Watts and her family are challenged to bet that they have only 12 hours to live in Funny Games, and after John C. Reilly tucks into a lonely bed at 8:43 PM, Anthony Hopkins adds the final seasoning to Ray Liotta’s sizzling brain stir fry in Hannibal. The scenes suggest foreboding developments into the late night hours, but 9:00 PM arrives more with a whimper than a bang.
9:00pm
by Jeremy Meckler
An intertitle reads, “He who will not learn the lessons of time is doomed to repeat them,” as other kitschy time-based clips circle around in a cacophony. One wonders how many interns had to watch how many films to achieve this monstrous undertaking, but Marclay’s assemblage wizardry is a marvel, on par with Bruce Conner or modernist collage. Streetlights begin to turn on as the evening turns to night and Kevin Costner appears in seemingly every scene. In some nameless murder mystery someone is “clocked” by a candlestick. 9:30 is marked by a woman’s hair-raising scream and then a dive into movie stardom: Marlene Dietrich simpers seductively, Clint Eastwood growls his way through the script of Dirty Harry, and James Bond (this time a young Pierce Brosnan) drinks a lavish cocktail. Cary Grant plays the piano in The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock’s second version) and a dead man walks down The Green Mile. By the time 10:00 strikes, evening festivities are springing up—no more mundane suburban dinners or bedtime stories, this is cinematic party time. Marclay’s kitschy time-related lines may feel a little tired, but they all point toward the essential fact: film itself is about the passage of time, both in accrual—as story and information builds over the length of the work—and in the technology itself—as those 24 frames flash by every second, like clockwork.
by Jeremy Meckler
An intertitle reads, “He who will not learn the lessons of time is doomed to repeat them,” as other kitschy time-based clips circle around in a cacophony. One wonders how many interns had to watch how many films to achieve this monstrous undertaking, but Marclay’s assemblage wizardry is a marvel, on par with Bruce Conner or modernist collage. Streetlights begin to turn on as the evening turns to night and Kevin Costner appears in seemingly every scene. In some nameless murder mystery someone is “clocked” by a candlestick. 9:30 is marked by a woman’s hair-raising scream and then a dive into movie stardom: Marlene Dietrich simpers seductively, Clint Eastwood growls his way through the script of Dirty Harry, and James Bond (this time a young Pierce Brosnan) drinks a lavish cocktail. Cary Grant plays the piano in The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock’s second version) and a dead man walks down The Green Mile. By the time 10:00 strikes, evening festivities are springing up—no more mundane suburban dinners or bedtime stories, this is cinematic party time. Marclay’s kitschy time-related lines may feel a little tired, but they all point toward the essential fact: film itself is about the passage of time, both in accrual—as story and information builds over the length of the work—and in the technology itself—as those 24 frames flash by every second, like clockwork.
10:00pm
by Jeremy Meckler
10:04 brings a long awaited moment (for me at least) when lightning strikes the clock tower and sends Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd Back to the Future. Certainly everyone walking into this theater has their own time-associated cinematic memories they are praying to see incorporated—like that repeated Sonny and Cher “I Got You Babe” from Groundhog Day (does it make it to 6:00 am?!)—but perhaps none is quite so low-brow iconic as Marty McFly and Doc Brown’s trip. But after that, things begin to degrade quickly: someone is covered with Nickelodeon Gak®, and LL Cool J appears to say, “Time’s up, asshole,” in Mindhunters (the fact that Marclay managed to pull any enjoyable moments from that cesspool is a miracle in itself.). Indiana Jones makes an appearance, as this hour proves to be the more tuned to commercial success than 9:00 was. At 10:28 cinematic “classics” return as Kirk Douglass collapses in the newspaper office in Ace in the Hole and Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Pierre Léaud both poke their heads out. Shatner panics about the gremlin he sees crawling on the wing of the plane in The Twilight Zone. A malevolent field (accompanied by Echo and the Bunnymen) sets the tone—from Donnie Darko—and Bruce Campbell screams in The Evil Dead. Marclay’s multivalent connections are impressive—he cuts from the 40’s to the 2010’s and back like there is no difference. For this archivally powered kino eye, there isn’t; all cinema is just waiting to be absorbed.
by Jeremy Meckler
10:04 brings a long awaited moment (for me at least) when lightning strikes the clock tower and sends Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd Back to the Future. Certainly everyone walking into this theater has their own time-associated cinematic memories they are praying to see incorporated—like that repeated Sonny and Cher “I Got You Babe” from Groundhog Day (does it make it to 6:00 am?!)—but perhaps none is quite so low-brow iconic as Marty McFly and Doc Brown’s trip. But after that, things begin to degrade quickly: someone is covered with Nickelodeon Gak®, and LL Cool J appears to say, “Time’s up, asshole,” in Mindhunters (the fact that Marclay managed to pull any enjoyable moments from that cesspool is a miracle in itself.). Indiana Jones makes an appearance, as this hour proves to be the more tuned to commercial success than 9:00 was. At 10:28 cinematic “classics” return as Kirk Douglass collapses in the newspaper office in Ace in the Hole and Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Pierre Léaud both poke their heads out. Shatner panics about the gremlin he sees crawling on the wing of the plane in The Twilight Zone. A malevolent field (accompanied by Echo and the Bunnymen) sets the tone—from Donnie Darko—and Bruce Campbell screams in The Evil Dead. Marclay’s multivalent connections are impressive—he cuts from the 40’s to the 2010’s and back like there is no difference. For this archivally powered kino eye, there isn’t; all cinema is just waiting to be absorbed.
11:00pm
by Jeremy Meckler
Natalie Portman realizes what time it is and mutters “shit” to open the 11:00 hour (V for Vendetta). Lucille Ball laughs and Tom Cruise is a young, gritty spy again (Mission Impossible). Things turn darker quickly as Vincent Price faces mortality in The Pit and the Pendulum and Susan and Charles grow distant in their cold mansion in Citizen Kane (before he smashes all of her treasures). Women watch television around 11:35, though the strikingly different aesthetics for how these women are shot makes the exercise interesting. Their juxtaposition, doing the exact same thing, just goes to demonstrate the power of editing: a nearly identical moment can be made cool or sinister, boring or serene, depressing or relieving, all by light of the mild aesthetic choices made around its production. As midnight approaches, the edits become quicker and more exciting—things are ramping up toward a finale like the end of a fireworks show. Travis Bickle drives through a serene neon-smeared world (Taxi Driver) and Chow Mo-wan smokes a cigarette in his stylized office (In the Mood for Love) as these explosive shots sound around them. If you make it to only a few minutes of the 24-hour clock, make those the excitement around midnight. As today wraps up toward tomorrow, things get really exciting.
by Jeremy Meckler
Natalie Portman realizes what time it is and mutters “shit” to open the 11:00 hour (V for Vendetta). Lucille Ball laughs and Tom Cruise is a young, gritty spy again (Mission Impossible). Things turn darker quickly as Vincent Price faces mortality in The Pit and the Pendulum and Susan and Charles grow distant in their cold mansion in Citizen Kane (before he smashes all of her treasures). Women watch television around 11:35, though the strikingly different aesthetics for how these women are shot makes the exercise interesting. Their juxtaposition, doing the exact same thing, just goes to demonstrate the power of editing: a nearly identical moment can be made cool or sinister, boring or serene, depressing or relieving, all by light of the mild aesthetic choices made around its production. As midnight approaches, the edits become quicker and more exciting—things are ramping up toward a finale like the end of a fireworks show. Travis Bickle drives through a serene neon-smeared world (Taxi Driver) and Chow Mo-wan smokes a cigarette in his stylized office (In the Mood for Love) as these explosive shots sound around them. If you make it to only a few minutes of the 24-hour clock, make those the excitement around midnight. As today wraps up toward tomorrow, things get really exciting.
12:00am
by Jeremy Meckler
The hour kicks off with a bang—or a clang?—with clocks chiming from dozens of horror movies. The witching hour is upon us! Then Big Ben chimes, and explodes, in V for Vendetta and Orson Welles is stabbed by a mechanized clock soldier in The Stranger. But no, this terror and violence is all just a dream as Clark Gable soothes a little girl’s nightmare in Gone with the Wind. If 10:00 was the hour of the blockbuster, this is the hour of sex and violence. A high-priced call girl (Jane Fonda) reads a book in bed and Woody Allen explains he is such a good lover because he’s “had a lot of practice by himself” (Love and Death). At 12:12 we are back into the fray; Big Ben is back in action as Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson fight their way between the gears (Around the World in 80 Days), even dangling from the minute hand like Harry Lloyd (Safety Last) or Jonathan Ames (Bored to Death). Is there a more heavy-handed cinematic metaphor linking time and death? Things begin to devolve into obscurity again, but that is not without its own joys. While there is fun in those scenes you recognize or those scenes so bizarre they make you laugh out of context, the true magic of The Clock is in all of those boring B-movie shots in between. Two women in two different movies watch television in bed while their shirtless partners work on their big, chunky laptops. The oddity of this graphic match shouldn’t be surprising, as Marclay has been doing it all along, but his ability to pull nearly identical shots from disparate films in the whole history of cinema is stunning. How many bland dramas did he have to watch to find these paired images of 90’s suburban mediocrity? It is these unsuspected echoes in the space-time of cinematic history that makes this experience so magical. Steve Martin trades in his gold watch for a night at a hotel, but John Candy is less lucky with his digital watch (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). At 12:40 James dean drinks milk straight from the bottle, and Brigette Bardot follows suit. As 1:00am approaches things get a little spookier—the call is coming from inside the house! People go to sleep while drunken revelers wander the streets. Soon the lights are turning out and people are falling into bed. Time marches on.
by Jeremy Meckler
The hour kicks off with a bang—or a clang?—with clocks chiming from dozens of horror movies. The witching hour is upon us! Then Big Ben chimes, and explodes, in V for Vendetta and Orson Welles is stabbed by a mechanized clock soldier in The Stranger. But no, this terror and violence is all just a dream as Clark Gable soothes a little girl’s nightmare in Gone with the Wind. If 10:00 was the hour of the blockbuster, this is the hour of sex and violence. A high-priced call girl (Jane Fonda) reads a book in bed and Woody Allen explains he is such a good lover because he’s “had a lot of practice by himself” (Love and Death). At 12:12 we are back into the fray; Big Ben is back in action as Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson fight their way between the gears (Around the World in 80 Days), even dangling from the minute hand like Harry Lloyd (Safety Last) or Jonathan Ames (Bored to Death). Is there a more heavy-handed cinematic metaphor linking time and death? Things begin to devolve into obscurity again, but that is not without its own joys. While there is fun in those scenes you recognize or those scenes so bizarre they make you laugh out of context, the true magic of The Clock is in all of those boring B-movie shots in between. Two women in two different movies watch television in bed while their shirtless partners work on their big, chunky laptops. The oddity of this graphic match shouldn’t be surprising, as Marclay has been doing it all along, but his ability to pull nearly identical shots from disparate films in the whole history of cinema is stunning. How many bland dramas did he have to watch to find these paired images of 90’s suburban mediocrity? It is these unsuspected echoes in the space-time of cinematic history that makes this experience so magical. Steve Martin trades in his gold watch for a night at a hotel, but John Candy is less lucky with his digital watch (Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). At 12:40 James dean drinks milk straight from the bottle, and Brigette Bardot follows suit. As 1:00am approaches things get a little spookier—the call is coming from inside the house! People go to sleep while drunken revelers wander the streets. Soon the lights are turning out and people are falling into bed. Time marches on.
5:00am
by Kathie Smith
The 5 o’clock hour of Christian Marclay’s one-of-a-kind cinematic mélange The Clock exudes a perfect ambiance for those pre-dawn moments—eerie, dreamlike, and revealing on more of a subconscious level. This is, of course, all sketched out with movies clips that already have a psychological hold on a subconscious level for any film fan. After a barrage of alarm clocks marking the top of the hour (a ritual that is reiterated in the successive hours), the assemblage shifts somewhat haphazardly between sinister and magical.
An aging actress finds her tipping point and loses all touch with reality as revealed in a body laying face down in a pool as the police scrutinize the scene. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
As a devilish spirit startles a woman from sleep, karma reaches a couple who planned a get-rich-quick scheme by kidnapping a young boy. Whisper (2007)
Is he a man or machine? An unforgettable and haunting dream sequence of a unicorn offers a clue (a shot that is just as breathtaking in The Clock as it is in its original context). Blade Runner – Director’s Cut (1982)
We heard the enigmatic last word of a business tycoon—”Rosebud”—that fuels one of the greatest American films of all times. Citizen Kane (1941)
A woman paces in a beach house—a moment that some of us heartbreakingly know she is contemplating her own death. Interiors (1978)
The Clock paints a picture of an ethereal time of day, the waning witching hours punctuated by unexplained oddities set to celluloid: a hand reaching for an alarm clock being stabbed by a hypodermic needle (a truly startling moment) and a man is inexplicably stabbed by a metronome (a truly silly moment). Like many of the seconds, minutes, sequences, and hours of The Clock, this hour is certainly one worth experiencing.
by Kathie Smith
The 5 o’clock hour of Christian Marclay’s one-of-a-kind cinematic mélange The Clock exudes a perfect ambiance for those pre-dawn moments—eerie, dreamlike, and revealing on more of a subconscious level. This is, of course, all sketched out with movies clips that already have a psychological hold on a subconscious level for any film fan. After a barrage of alarm clocks marking the top of the hour (a ritual that is reiterated in the successive hours), the assemblage shifts somewhat haphazardly between sinister and magical.
An aging actress finds her tipping point and loses all touch with reality as revealed in a body laying face down in a pool as the police scrutinize the scene. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
As a devilish spirit startles a woman from sleep, karma reaches a couple who planned a get-rich-quick scheme by kidnapping a young boy. Whisper (2007)
Is he a man or machine? An unforgettable and haunting dream sequence of a unicorn offers a clue (a shot that is just as breathtaking in The Clock as it is in its original context). Blade Runner – Director’s Cut (1982)
We heard the enigmatic last word of a business tycoon—”Rosebud”—that fuels one of the greatest American films of all times. Citizen Kane (1941)
A woman paces in a beach house—a moment that some of us heartbreakingly know she is contemplating her own death. Interiors (1978)
The Clock paints a picture of an ethereal time of day, the waning witching hours punctuated by unexplained oddities set to celluloid: a hand reaching for an alarm clock being stabbed by a hypodermic needle (a truly startling moment) and a man is inexplicably stabbed by a metronome (a truly silly moment). Like many of the seconds, minutes, sequences, and hours of The Clock, this hour is certainly one worth experiencing.
6:00am
by Kathie Smith
Six in the morning might be time that most people are waking up (and Marclay reminds us of this with alarms du cinéma), but for audience members on an all night jag, this is where the pastiche gets blurry and strangely mystical. One transition bleeds into the next with a certain amount of fluidity, the audio working as the connective glue. Marclay sometimes allows the dialogue to carry over to the next clip and he occasionally blankets a series of clips with a single soundtrack, setting up surreal revelations that sort of shudder under the auspices of film history. There’s a certain gentleness to this hour that helps you retreat from the gimmick of sliced-and-diced pop culture to the rhythm of a clock image. Where do Louis de Pointe du Lac and Sam Lowry meet? Poetically in the early hours of The Clock, but also within they grey matter of cinephilia. Marclay’s formalist project is a deconstruction of film form that happens right before your very eyes, over and over again. And at the point when you stop looking for the clock or trying to identify every clip is when The Clock hits an exhilarating plateau, especially for those who love cinema and all of its fascinating possibilities.
by Kathie Smith
Six in the morning might be time that most people are waking up (and Marclay reminds us of this with alarms du cinéma), but for audience members on an all night jag, this is where the pastiche gets blurry and strangely mystical. One transition bleeds into the next with a certain amount of fluidity, the audio working as the connective glue. Marclay sometimes allows the dialogue to carry over to the next clip and he occasionally blankets a series of clips with a single soundtrack, setting up surreal revelations that sort of shudder under the auspices of film history. There’s a certain gentleness to this hour that helps you retreat from the gimmick of sliced-and-diced pop culture to the rhythm of a clock image. Where do Louis de Pointe du Lac and Sam Lowry meet? Poetically in the early hours of The Clock, but also within they grey matter of cinephilia. Marclay’s formalist project is a deconstruction of film form that happens right before your very eyes, over and over again. And at the point when you stop looking for the clock or trying to identify every clip is when The Clock hits an exhilarating plateau, especially for those who love cinema and all of its fascinating possibilities.
RSS Feed