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I wanted to stay away from the real famous movies for awhile but I couldn't stay away from this one.My all time favorite love story.Over time love lasts and truth is a as strange as a good sic fi idea and a classical musical score that,alas, many of us only hear in movies.First to the music.
"Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op. 43, Variation XVIII" Andante Cantabile -which is to say " to play a piece of music at a moderate tempo with a singing effect"is adapted into the "Somewhere in Time Theme "by John Barry & Roger Williams.Some of the most hauntingly beautiful music I have ever heard that ranks right up with Pachelbel's -Canon in D major -used as wedding march music and at least 3 movies I seen.Enough high brow but the music is wondrous.
Ah the acting is again wonderfully played by Christopher Reeve as Richard Collier showing that in his all to brief career he was much more than Superman.Jane Seymour as Elise McKenna a truly beautiful and gifted actress and finally one of Canada's greatest if not the greatest (Bill Shatner ??)male actor Christopher Plummer as William Fawcett Robinson.The supporting class is well cast also.
The story is as timeless as love and tragic as a separation with a little sic - fi thrown in because love is,as sic fi is,truly mystifying and wondrous and based on faith in a truth not known or really understood.Now to a short capsule.Richard is celebrating the successful opening of his play in Chicago when a old woman enters his backstage room and puts a old watch on a chain in his hand and softly cries to him to"come back to me"
Thinking nothing at the time he continues his career but after a few years he sort of is in a writers block and needs to get away to the Grand Hotel on the Straits of Mackinac waterfront. Which is Mackinac Island, Michigan, a small island located at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac within Lake Huron between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas .I have not been that far north but it looks beautiful in this film as a setting for such a story should.Now to the sic -fi
In the hotels museum he views a picture of a beautiful woman whom he finds out is in fact the old woman who gave him the watch years ago.From this revelation he returns to his old college to seek out a professor who wrote a book about time travel. Using the mind and sort of self hypnosis and swears,for a brief moment,he was somewhere else.He advises Richard to be alone and have nothing on his person of this time to distract him.I can write for hours on this film but lets just say it works and he does meet her but of course she doesn't know him as yet and her Manager William sees in Richard the threat he feared to Elise's career which is also good sci-fi tease,who is he really and what does he know??
Well they do finally finally fall in love and he gives her that watch.Sadly he sees a coin from the present in his pants and is drawn back to it,leaving her desperate and heartbroken and she retreats to her own sad lonely exisle from the stage till she can meet him again,in the future.The paradox of time travel is smartly evident in the watch.She gave it to him,he gives it to her,where did it come from??The old"which came first,the chicken or the egg??" The ending is sad or is it??It can be taken in different ways but if so,the paradox just gets deeper.Release in 1980 it a sadly short 103 minutes.A MUST see as both a love story and sic fi gold standard.
The trailer URL is below the pix as always.
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3649306905/
"Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op. 43, Variation XVIII" Andante Cantabile -which is to say " to play a piece of music at a moderate tempo with a singing effect"is adapted into the "Somewhere in Time Theme "by John Barry & Roger Williams.Some of the most hauntingly beautiful music I have ever heard that ranks right up with Pachelbel's -Canon in D major -used as wedding march music and at least 3 movies I seen.Enough high brow but the music is wondrous.
Ah the acting is again wonderfully played by Christopher Reeve as Richard Collier showing that in his all to brief career he was much more than Superman.Jane Seymour as Elise McKenna a truly beautiful and gifted actress and finally one of Canada's greatest if not the greatest (Bill Shatner ??)male actor Christopher Plummer as William Fawcett Robinson.The supporting class is well cast also.
The story is as timeless as love and tragic as a separation with a little sic - fi thrown in because love is,as sic fi is,truly mystifying and wondrous and based on faith in a truth not known or really understood.Now to a short capsule.Richard is celebrating the successful opening of his play in Chicago when a old woman enters his backstage room and puts a old watch on a chain in his hand and softly cries to him to"come back to me"
Thinking nothing at the time he continues his career but after a few years he sort of is in a writers block and needs to get away to the Grand Hotel on the Straits of Mackinac waterfront. Which is Mackinac Island, Michigan, a small island located at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac within Lake Huron between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas .I have not been that far north but it looks beautiful in this film as a setting for such a story should.Now to the sic -fi
In the hotels museum he views a picture of a beautiful woman whom he finds out is in fact the old woman who gave him the watch years ago.From this revelation he returns to his old college to seek out a professor who wrote a book about time travel. Using the mind and sort of self hypnosis and swears,for a brief moment,he was somewhere else.He advises Richard to be alone and have nothing on his person of this time to distract him.I can write for hours on this film but lets just say it works and he does meet her but of course she doesn't know him as yet and her Manager William sees in Richard the threat he feared to Elise's career which is also good sci-fi tease,who is he really and what does he know??
Well they do finally finally fall in love and he gives her that watch.Sadly he sees a coin from the present in his pants and is drawn back to it,leaving her desperate and heartbroken and she retreats to her own sad lonely exisle from the stage till she can meet him again,in the future.The paradox of time travel is smartly evident in the watch.She gave it to him,he gives it to her,where did it come from??The old"which came first,the chicken or the egg??" The ending is sad or is it??It can be taken in different ways but if so,the paradox just gets deeper.Release in 1980 it a sadly short 103 minutes.A MUST see as both a love story and sic fi gold standard.
The trailer URL is below the pix as always.
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