The Clock (1945)

During WWII, a young soldier (Robert Walker) gets two days leave which he takes to visit New York City for the first time. He meets a young secretary (Judy Garland) and they spend the next 48 hours together as love blooms. Quite simply, one of the best romance movies ever made! Vincente Minnelli and Garland had just done MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS the year before and this was Garland's first film in which she was used strictly as an actress, she doesn't sing a note. Working from a script by Robert Nathan and Joseph Schrank, Minnelli does a wonderful job of keeping the simple love story from becoming cloying or sappy and the Manhattan setting recreated on the MGM back lot is stunning. Say what you will about MGM, their production designers and art directors were untouchable in the studio system. Garland and Walker have such a genuine chemistry and sweetness together that we're pulling for them all the way and the sequence when they lose each other for a several hours in the big city is as nerve wracking as a Hitchcock thriller. George Bassman is responsible for the gorgeous score. With Keenan Wynn, James Gleason, Marshall Thompson, Moyna MacGill and Ruth Brady.