Time After Time | |
---|---|
![]() Promotional poster | |
Directed by | Nicholas Meyer |
Screenplay by | Nicholas Meyer |
Story by | Steve Hayes |
Based on | Time After Time 1979 novel by Karl Alexander [1] |
Produced by | Herb Jaffe |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Paul Lohmann |
Edited by | Donn Cambern |
Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
Release dates | |
Running time | 112 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $13 million [3] |
Time After Time is a 1979 American science fiction film written and directed by Nicholas Meyer and starring Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, and Mary Steenburgen. Filmed in Panavision, it was the directing debut of Meyer, whose screenplay is based on the premise from Karl Alexander's novel Time After Time (which was unfinished at the time) and a story by Alexander and Steve Hayes. The film presents a story in which British author H. G. Wells uses his time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper into the 20th century.
In 1893 London, popular writer H. G. Wells displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests and explains how it works, including having a "non-return key" that keeps the machine at the traveler's destination and a "vaporizing equalizer" that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms. Police constables suddenly arrive, searching for Jack the Ripper. A bag with blood-stained gloves belonging to Wells's friend John Leslie Stevenson, a surgeon, leads them to conclude that Stevenson may be the killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.
Stevenson escapes to the future, though without the "non-return" key, causing the machine to automatically reappear in 1893. Wells then pursues Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine is now on display at a museum in San Francisco. Wells finds the future deeply shocking, having expected an enlightened socialist utopia. Instead, he sees chaos in the form of airplanes, automobiles and a history of global war, crime and bloodshed.
At a bank, Wells exchanges some British bank notes for present-day American currency. Hungry, he enters a McDonald's and is alternately puzzled and pleased with modern dining options. Reasoning that Stevenson also needs to exchange British money, Wells visits various banks searching for him. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets employee Amy Robbins, who directed Stevenson to the Hyatt Regency hotel. Smitten with Wells, she gives him her card, saying he should “give her a ring”.
Upon being confronted by Wells, Stevenson confesses that he finds modern society pleasingly violent, stating: "Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Today, I'm an amateur." Wells demands he return to 1893 to face justice, but Stevenson instead attempts to wrestle the non-return key from him. Their struggle is interrupted by a maid and Stevenson flees, getting hit by a car during the frantic chase. Wells follows him to the hospital emergency room and assumes Stevenson is dead.
Wells meets up with Amy again and she initiates a romance. Stevenson returns to the bank to exchange more money. Suspecting that Amy led Wells to him, he frightens her into giving Wells a message and later discovers where she lives. To convince a highly skeptical Amy that he is telling the truth, Wells takes her three days into the future. She is aghast to see a newspaper headline revealing her own murder as the "San Francisco Ripper's" fifth victim.
Wells persuades her that they must go back to prevent the fourth victim's murder, then prevent Amy's. Upon returning, they are delayed and can do no more than phone the police. Stevenson kills again, and Wells is arrested due to his knowledge about the killing. Amy is left alone, totally defenseless against Stevenson.
While Wells unsuccessfully tries to convince the police of Amy's peril, she attempts to hide from Stevenson. When the police finally investigate her apartment, they find a woman's dismembered body. Believing him innocent, the police release a now-heartbroken Wells. Stevenson actually killed Amy's co-worker, who was the dead body in Amy's apartment. He contacts Wells to state that he has taken Amy hostage and demands the non-return key.
Stevenson flees with the key – and Amy as insurance – intending a permanent escape in the time machine. Wells erratically drives Amy's car and follows them to the museum. While Wells bargains for Amy's life, she escapes. As Stevenson starts up the time machine, Wells removes the "vaporizing equalizer", causing Stevenson to vanish while the machine remains in the present. Stevenson has been sent traveling endlessly through time.
Wells proclaims he must return to his own time and destroy a machine that is too dangerous for primitive mankind. Amy pleads with him to take her along, saying she has no remaining ties in the 20th century. The film finishes with the caption: "H.G. Wells married Amy Catherine Robbins, who died in 1927. As a writer, he anticipated socialism, global war, space travel and women's liberation. He died in 1946."
According to Meyer from the commentary track for the DVD and Blu-ray release of the film, the author of the novel presented Meyer with 55 pages of his unpublished novel and asked Meyer to critique his work. Meyer liked the premise and immediately optioned the story so he could write a screenplay based on the material and develop the story his own way. [4]
McDowell was attracted to the material because he was looking for something different from the sex and violence in Caligula , in which he played the title character. [5]
While preparing to portray Wells, McDowell obtained a copy of a 78 rpm recording of Wells speaking. McDowell was "absolutely horrified" to hear that Wells spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky voice with a pronounced Southeast London accent, which McDowell felt would have resulted in unintentional humor if he tried to mimic it for the film. McDowell abandoned any attempt to recreate Wells's authentic speaking style and preferred a more "dignified" style. [5]
According to David Warner, the studio wanted Mick Jagger for the role of John Leslie Stevenson but director Nicholas Meyer and producer Herb Jaffe fought for Warner to get the role. [6]
It was one of the last films scored by veteran composer Miklós Rózsa, who received the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Music.
Time After Time was filmed throughout San Francisco, including Cow Hollow, North Beach, the Hyatt Regency hotel, Westin Bonaventure Hotel, California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, the Marina District, Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, the Richmond District, the Golden Gate Bridge, Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, the Embarcadero Center, Chinatown, the Marina Green, the Palace of Fine Arts, Potrero Hill, and the Civic Center.
The film premiered with a gala presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 1979. [2]
Time After Time received a positive response from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 88% based on 32 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "With the three principal actors clearly having fun with their roles, Time After Time becomes an amusing, light-hearted fantasy lark." [7]
Variety described the film as "a delightful, entertaining trifle of a film that shows both the possibilities and limitations of taking liberties with literature and history. Nicholas Meyer has deftly juxtaposed Victorian England and contemporary America in a clever story, irresistible due to the competence of its cast". [8] Janet Maslin of The New York Times similarly lauded, "Time After Time is every bit as magical as the trick around which it revolves". She continued:
Mr. Meyer isn't a particularly skilled director; this is his first attempt, and on occasion it's very clumsy. But as a whizkid he's gone straight to the head of the class, with a movie that's as sweet as it is clever, and never so clever that it forgets to be entertaining. The satisfactions Time After Time offers are perhaps no more sophisticated than the fun one might have with an intricate set of electric trains. Still, fun of this sort isn't always easy to come by, not after one's age has climbed up into two digits. There's a lot to be said for an adult's movie with the shimmer of a child's new toy. [9]
The interior scenes set in London borrow heavily from the 1960 film The Time Machine , which was based on the 1895 H.G. Wells novella of the same name. Commentators also noticed parallels between Time After Time and Back to the Future Part III in which Mary Steenburgen appeared. [10] She said:
Actually, I've played the same scene in that film (Time After Time) and in (BTTF) Part III... I've had a man from a different time period tell me that he's in love with me, but he has to go back to his own time. My response in both cases is, of course, disbelief, and I order them out of my life. Afterwards, I find out I was wrong and that, in fact, the man is indeed from another time, and I go after him (them) to profess my love. It's a pretty strange feeling to find yourself doing the same scene, so many years apart, for the second time in your career. [11]
The casting of Steenburgen for Back to the Future Part III appears to be deliberately intended to mirror the earlier role. [12] [13] In Time After Time, the woman lives in the 20th century and the time traveler is from the 19th. In Back to the Future Part III, the woman inhabits the 19th century and the time traveler is from the 20th. [13] In both films, the woman eventually goes back with the time traveler to live in his own time period. [14]
Some similar time travel incongruities as well as the modern San Francisco urban setting also appeared in 1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , for which Nicholas Meyer shared writing credit. The details of time travelers from distant eras obtaining and exchanging present day American currency were similar in both films. In Star Trek IV, a featured female character, Dr. Gillian Taylor, ends up joining her paramour, Captain James T. Kirk, living in the future, similar to the conclusion of Time After Time.[ citation needed ]
Nicholas Meyer won the Saturn Award for Best Writing, Mary Steenburgen won the Saturn Award for Best Actress, and Miklós Rózsa won the Saturn Award for Best Music. Saturn Award nominations went to Meyer for Best Director, Malcolm McDowell for Best Actor, David Warner for Supporting Actor, and Sal Anthony and Yvonne Kubis for Best Costumes, and the film was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film.
Nicholas Meyer won the Antenne II Award and the Grand Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival and he was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay and the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.
On May 12, 2016, the ABC television network announced that it had picked up a Time After Time television series to air in the 2016–2017 television season. The series, executive produced and written by Kevin Williamson, [15] [16] was cancelled after only five episodes. [17] [18]
Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".
The Time Machine is an 1895 dystopian post-apocalyptic science fiction novella by H. G. Wells about a Victorian scientist known as the Time Traveller who travels approximately 800,806 years into the future. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.
Mary Nell Steenburgen is an American actress, comedian, singer, and songwriter. After studying at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse in the 1970s, she made her professional acting debut in the Western comedy film Goin' South (1978). Steenburgen went on to earn critical acclaim for her role in Time After Time (1979) and Jonathan Demme's comedy-drama film Melvin and Howard (1980), for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Malcolm McDowell is an English actor. He first became known for portraying Mick Travis in Lindsay Anderson's if.... (1968), a role he later reprised in O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982). His performance in if.... prompted Stanley Kubrick to cast him as Alex in A Clockwork Orange (1971), the role for which McDowell became best known.
Back to the Future Part III is a 1990 American science fiction Western film and the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, and stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen, Thomas F. Wilson, and Lea Thompson. The film continues immediately following Back to the Future Part II (1989); while stranded in 1955 during his time travel adventures, Marty McFly (Fox) discovers that his friend Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Lloyd), trapped in 1885, was killed by Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (Wilson), Biff's great-grandfather. Marty travels to 1885 to rescue Doc and return once again to 1985, but matters are complicated when Doc falls in love with Clara Clayton (Steenburgen).
Nicholas Meyer is an American screenwriter, director and author known for his best-selling novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and for directing the films Time After Time, two of the Star Trek feature films, the 1983 television film The Day After, and the 1999 HBO original film Vendetta.
The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood. In 1921, The Globe merged into The Pall Mall Gazette, which itself was absorbed into The Evening Standard in 1923.
Melvin and Howard (stylized as Melvin (and Howard)) is a 1980 American comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Demme. The screenplay by Bo Goldman was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, who was listed as the beneficiary of $156 million in a will allegedly handwritten by Howard Hughes that was discovered in the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. A novelization of Goldman's script, which itself won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen, later was written by George Gipe. The film stars Paul Le Mat, Jason Robards, and Mary Steenburgen, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was released on September 19, 1980, receiving positive reviews from critics.
Cross Creek is a 1983 American biographical drama romance film starring Mary Steenburgen as The Yearling author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The film is directed by Martin Ritt and is based in part on Rawlings's 1942 memoir Cross Creek.
Back to the Future is an animated science-fiction comedy adventure television series for television based on the live-action Back to the Future film trilogy. The show lasted two seasons, each featuring 13 episodes, and ran on CBS from September 14, 1991, to December 26, 1992, with reruns until August 14, 1993. Citing low ratings, CBS cancelled the show after two seasons. It was later rerun on Fox as a part of the FoxBox block from March 22 to August 30, 2003.
Goin' South is a 1978 American Western comedy film directed by and starring Jack Nicholson, with Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi, Richard Bradford, Veronica Cartwright, Danny DeVito and Ed Begley Jr..
The Time Machine is a 1960 American period post-apocalyptic science fiction film based on the 1895 novella of the same name by H. G. Wells. It was produced and directed by George Pal, and stars Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, and Alan Young. The story is set in Victorian England and follows an inventor who constructs a machine that enables him to travel into the distant future. Once there, he discovers that mankind's descendants have divided into two species, the passive, childlike, and vegetarian Eloi and the underground-dwelling Morlocks, who feed on the Eloi.
The Time Machine is a 2002 American post-apocalyptic science fiction film loosely adapted by John Logan from the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells and the screenplay of the 1960 film of the same name by David Duncan. Arnold Leibovit served as executive producer and Simon Wells, the great-grandson of the original author, served as director. The film stars Guy Pearce, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba, Mark Addy, and Jeremy Irons, and includes a cameo by Alan Young, who also appeared in the 1960 film adaptation. The film is set in New York City instead of London, and contains new story elements not present in the original novel or the 1960 film adaptation, including a romantic subplot, a new scenario about how civilization was destroyed, and several new characters such as an artificially intelligent hologram and a Morlock leader.
Time After Time is a 1979 science fiction novel by American writer Karl Alexander. Its plot speculates what might have happened if H. G. Wells had built a real time machine to travel to the 1970s in search of Jack the Ripper.
Malcolm St. Clair was a Hollywood film director, writer, producer and actor.
Miss Firecracker is a 1989 American comedy film directed by Thomas Schlamme. It stars Holly Hunter, Mary Steenburgen, Tim Robbins, Alfre Woodard, and Scott Glenn. The film, set in Yazoo City, Mississippi, was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley and is based on her 1984 play The Miss Firecracker Contest. Holly Hunter reprised the role of Carnelle Scott, whom she played in an off-Broadway production of Henley’s play.
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Margot Bennett is an American publicist and former actress who appeared in various stage, television and film roles between the years 1957 and 1973. She is best known for her appearances in the films O Lucky Man! and Who Killed Teddy Bear, and for being the first wife of both actor Keir Dullea and, later, actor Malcolm McDowell.
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I was noticing the time-traveling ties between Time After Time (1979) and another movie Back to the Future III (1990), a film also starring Mary Steenburgen. In Time After Time, she played Amy Robbins, a 20th Century woman who falls in love with a time traveller, H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) from the 19th Century.... In Back to the Future Part III (1990), she played Clara Clayton, a 19th Century woman who falls in love with a time traveller (played by Christopher Lloyd), from the 20th Century.
Steenburgen was sought to play Clara in part based on her role in this movie where she plays the love interest of another time traveller. Instead of a man from the future who is a fan of a famed 19th century sci-fi and fantasy author, her leading man is from the past and an actual famed 19th century sci-fi and fantasy author, H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell)... he brings Steenburgen's character back to his own time period, just as Doc does with Clara.
The role of Clara Clayton was written specifically for Mary Steenburgen. – In the film, Clara Clayton is a 19th Century woman who falls in love with a time traveler from the 20th Century. In Time After Time (1979), Mary Steenburgen played Amy Robbins, a 20th Century woman who falls in love with a time traveler from the 19th Century.
The conclusion to Back to the Future III (where both Doc and Clara travel to 1985 to meet with Marty once more, in a new time machine constructed within a steam-powered locomotive), intertextually connects this moment with the conclusion of Meyer's Time After Time, where H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) not only prevents Jack the Ripper (David Warner) from continuing his murder spree in San Francisco in 1979, but also brings Amy Robbins (also played by Mary Steenburgen) back to Victorian England with him. Thus, both women are positioned as a reward for the time traveller's dedication and emotional connection to the machine. Both Clara and Amy are permanently relocated by their respective masters of time, just as Wells's Time Traveller had intended with Weena.
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