Review of The Clock

The Clock (1945)
9/10
If people thought about all the things that could happen they'd never do anything!
27 March 2005
***SPOILERS*** The film "The Clock" ends where it began at the vast spacious and impersonal Pennsylvania Train Station in NYC as we see Alice, Judy Garland, disappear as the camera pull away and she's become just a small speck in the mass of humanity milling around there.

During the proceeding 48 hours Alice met by chance a young soldier Joe, Robert Walker, on a two-day pass before he's to be shipped over the Atlantic to England and eventually to the bloody battlegrounds in France and Germany to fight in the European Theater of War. During that time Alice and Joe fall in love have a whirlwind romance take a night-time sight-seeing ride of the city on a milk truck with milkman Al Henry (James Gleason), whom they helped in making his early morning deliveries. Later after getting married the two leave each other, Joe for the European battlefield and Alice for her home and job, knowing that it was fate that brought them together and it will be fate, that in the end, will bring them back together again after the war is over.

A very cute and adorable 22 year-old Judy Garland in her first adult, as well as non-singing, role playing Alice the type of girl that every GI would want to have waiting for them back home. Robert Walker is very effective as the naive and befuddled small town boy in the big city who finds, among the millions of people living and working there, the one girl that he's always been looking for to bring home and meet the parents as well as marry.

Touching little wartime romance involving two persons from totally different backgrounds and localities who would have never met if it wasn't for circumstances beyond their control, WWII, that in a strange and mysterious way brought them together more then anything else ever could. Besides the touching and poignant story and wonderful chemistry between the two top stars, Judy Garland & Robert Walker, "The Clock" was beautifully photographed with a stunning and nostalgic look at war-time, 1945, New York City. The film also brought out the people who lived there and how the war affected them and those that went "Over There" as well as those who were soon to go "Over There" to fight, and possibly die, "Over There".

There was a very touching scene at a almost empty church with Alice and Joe quietly taking the vows of matrimony that would bring you, like it did them, to tears. This after the chaotic scene at the Justice of the Peace office in City Hall that had Alice wondering if she did, in marrying Joe, the right thing in the first place P.S She Did.
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