Somewhere in Time

Another of the movies that's been sitting on my DVR for quite some time that I only recently got around to watching is Somewhere in Time.

Christopher Reeve, fresh off Superman, plays Richard Collier. As the movie starts, it's 1972, and Collier is a college senior drama major who has just written a play and is getting it presented on stage. Sitting in the audience is a mysterious old lady, who approaches Collier and gives him an expensive pocket watch and makes a comment that implies they've met before or will meet again.

Fast forward to the present day, in 1980. Collier has moved from the small college town to Chicago, where he's become a published playwright who has had several of his plays staged. But his personal life remains unfulfilled, and that's beginning to screw up his professional life too. So Richard decides what he needs is a break from Chicago, going back to his old college town. He's also earned enough that he can finally stay in the Grand Hotel that served wealthy tourists in the summer and, one might guess, wealthy alumni in the other three seasons.

A small museum in the hotel celebrates actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), who gave her final performance at the hotel's summer theater back in 1912 before retiring like Greta Garbo. But for whatever reason, Richard is intrigued, and decides to study up on her career, leading to the startling conclusion that this must have been the woman who gave him the pocket watch several years ago. Laura Roberts (Teresa Wright) worked for Elise in her later years and literally wrote the book on her, and still lives in town, rather conveniently. Richard goes to see her, showing her the pocket watch which is a pretty good way of showing he really does have a connection. Richard also learns that Elise had an interest in time travel, and had a book by one of Richard's old college professors.

Richard talks from the old professor and learns the professor's theory that through the power of self-hypnosis, time travel just may be possible. Richard gets obsessed with doing the same sort of self-hypnosis experiment that his college professor did, but with the difference that he's going to wake up on that day in the summer of 1912 when Elise retired from the stage, as Richard now believes he's fated to meet Elise again even though in the real world she's been dead for eight years already.

After the first experiment goes wrong, Richard wakes up from a second experiment to discover that it seeming is 1912! And young Elise is there, looking just like she did in the photos at the Grand Hotel. However, meeting her is going to be a bit difficult, as the 1912 version of Richard doesn't have any relations or good excuse for seeing Elise. She's also got a somewhat complicated personal life. Her manager William (Christopher Plummer) holds a fairly tight rein over her career, as he's grooming her for stardom. When he finds that Richard is in his view harassing Elise, he's none too happy.

Needless to say, Richard continues to pursue Elise, and perhaps it really is because of Richard that Elise retired from acting, staying here to look for him. But then how did young Richard wind up being reborn in time to graduate from college in 1972?

Upon its original release, Somewhere in Time got fairly poor reviews, although in the intervening years it's developed a cult following for various reasons. The good reason for that is the location shooting on Mackinac Island, a resort located on an island between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. James FitzPatrick did a Traveltalks short on the island, since even in the early 1940s it was known for not allowing motorized vehicles. The location shooting is lovely, and it's easy to see why people with a love for Mackinac Island would have a soft spot for the film. As for other people, I'm not quite certain why. I don't think Somewhere in Time is as bad as the critics of 1980 thought, but it's still a movie with a ridiculous premise and for me a ton of plot holes that aren't well explained. But it's definitely another of those movies you'll want to watch for yourself and draw your own conclusions.