Around The Clock: On an Overnight at MoMA (Web Exclusive)
by Will DiGravio

For the longest time, I thought of Christian Marclay’s The Clock as this century’s Ransom Stoddard—the U.S Senator portrayed by James Stewart celebrated in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)—a legend that could not possibly live up to all the ink spent in paying tribute. It presents too rich a chance, I thought, for film critics and theorists to trampoline from the work to broader discussions of cinematic history, appropriation, exhibition, and, of course, time. Beneath the legend must be only a pleasurable gimmick.

I was given a chance to test this hypothesis at the end of 2024, as I spent the night with the work as part of the twenty-four-hour-long epic viewing offered by the Museum of Modern Art. When Christian Marclay completed The Clock in 2010, he stipulated that any showings of the work must include at least one such complete screening. On December 21, New Yorkers had their chance to grab what became one of the hottest tickets in town.

As the big day neared, I walked off the F train and into the Bleecker Street station, only to be confronted by an advertisement for the work’s presence at MoMA. The sleek design of the ad captured the rare status of The Clock as high art with mass appeal. “The Clock is in town. Shall we go see it?” one friends says to another, as if it were the circus. And then there’s the shocking sums (more than $460,000!) that five museums and galleries paid for copies of the work. The sixth is owned by billionaire financier Steve Cohen, who a few years later purchased another spectacle, the New York Mets.

The Clock evokes one of the most treasured traditions of found-footage filmmaking, one made even more popular and prevalent in the era of digital remix culture: the supercut, a work that gathers a host of clips into a single, thematic montage. (For more on the supercut, see Scott MacDonald’s interview with Max Tohline on the Cineaste Website). The theme here, of course, is time. Marclay and his team of researchers assembled clips from more than twelve hundred television shows and movies to cinematically depict each minute of the day.

It all takes place in real time: When Atticus Finch checks his clock at 8:30 in the evening, it is 20:30 our time. Because the film is synched to reality, viewers are limited only to that which can be seen during the museum’s regular, public hours, hence the need for a twenty-four-hour showing. If you want to see what happens when the clock strikes midnight, get in line for the big show.

The twenty-four-hour viewing began at 7:00 p.m. I was fortunate to have a press ticket, affording me the opportunity to cut the queue and take a reserved seat, a level of luxury to which I am certainly not accustomed. Nevertheless, I was very excited and settled in comfortably. Little did I realize that my seat, or just mere access to one, would become the main form of entertainment for the evening.

While the viewing space of The Clock may change, the constant seems to be the seating: white Ikea sofas, in this case three rows of eight, each designed to seat three. About a third of the seats were “reserved,” for whom I do not know. But do the math and you will begin to see what became the main spectacle of the affair. Hundreds of more people filed into the gallery, lining the walls and taking in The Clock, some standing for hours.

As the first hour ended, the atmosphere grew tense. One could feel the eyes of those lining the walls scanning we the seated, hoping that one of us would vacate our precious spot on the couch. Others, not noticing the reserved signs on the backs of the rear couches, took one of the few not-yet-occupied seats, only to then have one of the endlessly patient MoMA staff members tap them on the shoulder and ask them to vacate.

Seldom in the first five hours did a seat become available, as those lucky enough to secure one had come prepared with full bellies and empty bladders. 20:12: There’s Tom Cruise. 20:13: Hello, Vincent Price. 20:47: A figure seated on the couch a few rows in front of me raises an arm to stretch, the light of the projected image reflecting off the person’s own watch.

With the nine o’clock hour, a certain mania set in, both on screen and in the museum. Marclay has structured the film around cliché: in the morning, he shows shots of people waking up and sipping coffee. Then comes the workday. At dinnertime, characters, well, eat dinner. Thus, it is around 21:00 where even the late dinner eaters are wrapping up, getting ready to seize the night, the time when drinks are flowing and sex and murder come out to play. At around 21:20, Kevin Costner in The Untouchables appears, eliciting cheers.

A new wave of New Yorkers begins to trickle into The Clock, some clearly coming from a posh dinner and drinks, ready to take on the next phase of their own night on the town. I watched a recurring sequence: a couple rounds the corner into the gallery space, one half with its nicely dressed arm around the other, only to recoil in horror at the absence of free seats. Surely, they must have thought, the $30.00 they each paid entitles one to a seat. Those around the walls must have paid some kind of discount rate, no?

At around this time, one particularly annoying, palpably wealthy couple entered and wasted no time voicing their displeasure to the staff and fellow patrons. Others have been shifting weight from one leg to another for hours. Meanwhile, this pair decides they have an immediate claim to a seat and cause a small stir before accepting their fate. They went on to stand for an hour or so, loudly talking to one another.

Never in my life have I felt so privileged or experienced such class consciousness. We the seated banded together, protecting our assets. I formed an alliance with the two others seated on our reserved couch: when one of us had to use the bathroom, we not only placed our bags and coat on our spot but asked the others to please defend it at all costs. The moment someone began to rise from a spot on the couch, those waiting in the wings would begin to sprint (literally) toward the vacated chair, sometimes to be woefully disappointed to learn that the previously seated viewer would soon be returning. I found myself embarrassed, living in direct opposition to my own politics inside a human experiment of Marclay’s creation.

As the time neared midnight, I began to grow only more uncomfortable. Marty McFly tries to return home. Humphrey Bogart makes an appearance or three. Ray Milland begins to plot the murder of Grace Kelly. The obnoxious couple tries again to occupy a reserved couch—they remain seated there. I suppose the staff had grown tired of their antics, who could blame them? I’m tempted to lean over and ask the man if he will pay off my student loan debt. But then I realize, in this moment, I am no better than him.

Dozens if not well over one hundred guests remained lined against the walls well into the night. I’m captivated still by Marclay’s use of Dial ‘M’ for Murder (1954), perhaps my favorite Hitchcock film. He makes impeccable use of the scene in which Milland and the unknowing Robert Cummings enjoy a night at the men’s club. Milland is checking his watch so he can make a perfectly timed phone call to the murderer, the plan being that this will prompt Kelly’s character to leave the safety of her bedroom.

But those of us who know this scene well understand that Milland’s watch has broken. The time that Marclay shows us is meaningful just to those of us in the audience, as it corresponds only to our own reality, not that of Milland’s Tony Wendice. The artifice of film, and indeed all humanity’s construction of time itself, is exposed.

There is something about The Clock that emboldens the unfriendly theatergoer. Just as I noticed the inaccuracy of Milland’s watch, I found myself playing a kind of Where’s Waldo with each timepiece, making certain, especially when an analogue one appeared, that no minute was out of place. Why this impulse? Say, for example, the clock showed 00:07 when it should have showed 00:08? Would this have really changed my experience? Of course not. But I persisted in my hunt for imperfections. Am I no less miserable than the loud moviegoers I have been judging?

The Clock not only invites such close viewing but demands it. To watch the work is to experience not just the length of a minute, but all that can or cannot happen in one. Thus, The Clock is much more than just a supercut, far more interesting than an assemblage of clocks. Marclay attempts to capture the rhythms of the day, to find a cohesion between the cinematic images rendered and our own experiences of the world.

As 01:00 became 02:00, and 03:00 became 04:00, we witness wild nights, such as the one experienced by Griffin Dunne in After Hours, come to a halt. The characters depicted are exhausted, drunk, or restless in bed. So, too, was I. At moments, I found myself falling asleep on the couch. Very few people remained standing up against the wall (though there were always a few) and I wondered whether Marclay wanted us to watch at this moment at all. Perhaps the point was to sleep with the characters, to blur further still his rendering of time.

The sun began to rise, and so, too, did the characters. My body started to crave coffee. I thought of those who had stood for hours and hours to watch The Clock earlier in the evening, now comfortably sleeping in their beds at home. I remembered the gift of the couch beneath me, and those who had stood quite literally for three, four, perhaps even five hours watching The Clock. What a long twelve hours it had been.

It was then that I realized that I could not have stood for that long. Not for any physical reason, but because I know I would have grown restless and bored and annoyed at the situation. Here was I, not only a budding film critic trying to make something of this experience, but someone with a specific interest in the history of found-footage filmmaking, writing a PhD on video essays and who had for years professed his desire to see The Clock in person. And I did not have what it takes.

I felt myself growing bitter. Where had all these folks been when I saw a shorter, far superior work, Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), with just a few others in attendance at the IFC Center? Or was I just hungry?

My time with the clock came to an end around 11:00 a.m. the next day, well into the time when the museum itself was open to the public. By that point, I had vacated my spot on the couch. My body insisted that I stand and stretch, so I did, perched at the back of the theater continuing to watch as time rolled on.

As I left, I could not help but feel a sense of dread. The Clock anticipates an unhealthy shift in our culture toward the epic, the massive, the oversized. Exercise is not enough; one must participate in a Spartan Race. Good food is superseded by lists of the best food. Why see only Van Gogh’s “A Starry Night” painting when there is “Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience”? I thought of Mr. Beast’s YouTube Channel.

When I finally exited the Museum of Modern Art on December 22, I fully intended to return and catch the final eight or so hours of the work. I have yet to go back. I do not yet have any desire to find myself on that couch again, and to do so now would be to give into that completist impulse that so dominates modern life. Perhaps not taking up space on the couches now is my way of repenting for the sin of my reserved seat.

Maybe I will encounter the film in another context, in a different museum, on a new continent, where I will be the disgruntled standee, left to ponder whether what I have witnessed is greatness, a gimmick, or both. Only time will tell.

The Clock will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art through May 11, 2025. For further information, visit here.

Will DiGravio, a Cineaste assistant editor, is a Brooklyn-based critic and researcher.

Copyright © 2025 by Cineaste, Inc.

Cineaste, Vol. L, No. 2