Somewhere in Time [dir. Jeannot Szwarc]

I don't seem to have spoken about it here before, but some years ago I had seen Jeannot Szwarc's 1980 fantasy romance Somewhere in Time (SiT). Last night I revisited it when I felt like indulging in some Christopher Reeve.

SiT is scripted by Richard Matheson, based on his own 1975 novel Bid Time Return. The movie has a 'meh' rep from several critics including Roger Ebert and my favorite fantasy film reviewer Richard Scheib. To be sure, the brickbats are not unfounded. The mechanics of time travel are pure bunkum - no particle physics or quantum mechanics at play here, you just will yourself strongly enough to be in a specific time (right down to the exact date) and pouf, there you are! 

Playwright Reeve is the one that undergoes this bargain-basement DIY form of time travel, in search of an actress (Jane Seymour) he has fallen in love with from a vintage photograph. Well, not just that; it appears that he has previously encountered this woman, albeit a much older avatar in which she pressed a fob watch into his hand with the words, "Come back to me". Although his effort to track the woman in the present reaches a literal dead-end (she having passed away some years ago), Reeve is convinced that they somehow knew each other in 1912. Armed with some decidedly hokey advice from a philosophy lecturer, alongside a vintage-era suit and a few coins of the period, he embarks on the trip through time to meet the love of his dreams at a specific moment in the past.

As previously stated, there is zero science to the process, and even after the time travel has occurred, the expected anachronism plays little part in the events that follow. But to the people that love this film (and there can be no middle road here, either you love it or you think it's tosh), this doesn't matter a whit. The core engine powering SiT is a chaste, delightfully old-fashioned and therefore timeless romance between Reeve and Seymour, that works like poignant wish-fulfillment. Reeve was not the most versatile actor, but when he played a gentleman, be it as a super-powered Kryptonian or this dashing scribe, he conveyed a wonderfully warm chivalrous presence few other actors can hope to match. And Seymour's actress is his equal: she has on her side ethereal beauty, complemented with a rare grace and suggestion of deep inner passions. With chemistry like this, who cares about narrative superficiality and hansom-sized plot holes? Christopher Plummer is the third angle, as Seymour's manager who is obsessed with his protege's career on the stage and sees Reeve only as a danger to his precious find. It is suggested, though never substantiated upon, that Plummer may know more than he lets on about Reeve's sudden entry into her life. All three (along with John Barry's memorable score and Isidore Mankofsky's evocative cinematography) give life to a film that shamelessly, but also gloriously, defines romantic melodrama.

It is also interesting that while a flop in the US, the film was apparently a big hit in Hong Kong. One wonders if it is because Asian audiences are more used to the idea of reincarnation and saw the film more as a (p)reincarnated love story than finding fault with the science of the time travel.

PS: Just so you don't think I am a lonely champion for this film, there is a society called INSITE (International Network of Somewhere In Time Enthusiasts) dedicated to celebrating and keeping alive the memory of this film, who put out a newsletter, arranged reunions of cast and crew and even tours of the major shoot locations.

PS2: People who liked this film (and/or Matheson's novel) should check out Ken Grimwood's 1987 book Replay, which may have been inspired by this, but takes the idea to another place altogether, and was justly included in publisher Gollancz's Fantasy Masterworks series.