Will The Clock Come To Chicago?

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 22, 2011 8:20PM

A new cult movie just ended its "run" in New York, and we fervently hope that it'll be coming soon to a theater near us. Quote-unquote run because the movie in question, The Clock by Christian Marclay, is technically an art installation. It ran for a month at the Paula Cooper Gallery, drawing capacity crowds even during its round-the-clock weekend screenings.

In fact, "round-the-clock" is the perfect way to describe the movie, which is 24 hours long and unfolds in "real time." David Bordwell's excellent essay sketches it out:

It’s a compilation of over 3000 film clips, mostly from Hollywood but also from Europe and Asia. Some of the footage is easily recognized, but a lot of it I couldn’t identify. The premise, or gimmick, is that every snippet of a scene is purportedly connected in some way to the passing of time measured on a clock. Characters check their watches, or the camera shows a wall clock or digital alarm clock or countdown device ... Christian Marclay ... assemble[s] scenes that synchronize perfectly with the passage of time in projection. A shot shows a watch at 11:55 AM; you look at your watch; it’s 11:55 AM.

Jerry Saltz was among those who made multiple visits, in order to catch different sections of the piece:

At 7 a.m., Marty McFly's Rube Goldbergian alarm clock goes off. Suddenly people in scene after scene are awakening to alarms, hearing radios, throwing clocks across rooms, rolling over back to sleep. Marlon Brando puts on cold cream; Willem Dafoe already looks haunted. The young Paul Newman curls up. I hear bells and watched people peeping into their new lovers' medicine cabinets. At 7:09 a.m., Brando again, staggeringly bloodied and battered, victoriously goes to work at the end of On the Waterfront. Just then, James Bond looks over Pussy Galore; Johnny Cash stakes out a suburban home; a woman and man have morning sex.

So will The Clock make its way to Chicago? The 24-hour nature of the piece makes it a challenge to screen (or exhibit, if you prefer), but Chicago has plenty of precedent for that. Andy Warhol's Sleep, which runs five hours, has played at the Siskel multiple times during the last few decades (and the Siskel is no stranger to other long movies). The annual Summer Solstice Celebration at the MCA would also be a grand opportunity. In a Facebook post about The Clock, Facets mentions, "We're looking into the possibility... It's more of an installation piece than a screening, but that doesn't mean there isn't a way - stay tuned." Our fingers are crossed.