Going back in time, specifically 36 years ago to the year 1980, a compelling time travel movie appeared on my TV set and changed my life forever. It was the first time I ever cried as a child watching a movie; the second was when Spock died at the end of the Wrath of Khan in 1982 and was infinitely more embarrassing because it was at my friend’s birthday party and his dad totally called me out.
Somewhere in Time was a movie based on a screenplay by Richard Matheson who also wrote the book Bid Time Return. Not many people know Matheson by name, but they probably know his stories. Matheson was responsible for such familiar titles as I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, Hell House and What Dreams May Come. That’s quite a body of work.
A Writer’s Writer
As a writer, Matheson is a complete humanist. He uses genre narratives to expose our ordinary, everyday humanity. I Am Legend is about the crushing loneliness of being the last man alive in a world full of vampires. The Shrinking Man (remade as the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man) is a treatise on loss, physical impairment and what it would feel like if your pet was the size of a house and suddenly wanted to eat you. A Stir of Echoes takes the classic ghost story and turns it into a detective story about helping a forlorn spirit by solving its untimely murder. Matheson also wrote a considerable number of teleplays for The Twilight Zone including one of the most memorable episodes, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. This fan favorite episode starred a young, handsome Canadian actor called William Shatner. You might know him better as Captain James Tiberius Kirk.
Writing Bid Time Return
In his novel, Bid Time Return (1975), Matheson uses time travel as a way to explore ideas of love and loss. It’s an interesting phenomenon that when we fall in love with another person it often feels inevitable and preordained as if it could never have happened any other way. Bid Time Return takes this idea as its main conceit. In 1976, it won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. According to legend, Matheson was traveling with his family on vacation to Piper’s Opera House in Nevada. Upon spying a portrait of a famous American actress named Maude Adams, he was smitten. Adams had made a career playing Peter Pan in the early 1900s but had died in 1953 at the age of 80.
Matheson felt an instant connection with Adams through her photograph, even though they’d never met in real life. He used this obsession to help him sketch out the plot of his time travel novel. Matheson opined, “Creatively I fell in love with her. What if some guy did the same thing and could go back in time?” Much like his main character, Richard Collier, Matheson began to research the life of Maude Adams and was surprised by the lonely life she had lived. In order to write the novel, he stayed at the Hotel del Coronado, a historic beachfront hotel built in 1888, where all of the novel’s events take place. He sunk himself into the role of Collier, dictating much of the story onto a tape recorder. For the movie, the location was moved to The Grand Hotel, a resort hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan and takes place in the past later in 1912.
In the novel, Collier has a brain tumor and is facing certain extinction. On the flip of a coin, he decides to spend his last days at the Hotel del Coronado where he sees the photograph of Elise. In the movie, an old lady approaches Collier and tells him, “Come back to me” handing him a pocket watch. 8 years later he finds himself at the Grand Hotel trying to overcome writer’s block, finds Elise’s photograph and realizes she is the same old lady who asked him to come back to her. Obsession with her photograph follows. In the novel and movie, Collier begins to research Elise’s life and learns about an overbearing manager and a mysterious lover with whom she had a brief affair. Collier becomes convinced he must travel back in time to be with Elise and become her “mysterious lover”.
Through self-hypnosis and by surrounding himself with artifacts from the past and donning an old suit, Collier learns to travel back to the 1890s/1912 time period in which Elise lived and locate her. As soon as they meet, Elise asks Collier, “Is it you?” It turns out Elise is expecting Collier because two different psychics have told her she would meet a mysterious man at that exact time and place. Is this actually destiny? Where they always destined to meet?
The movie enjoys more power than it probably deserves, largely given to it by a superb score written and conducted by John Barry (of James Bond fame). Spoiler: Richard Collier and Elise become lovers and it seems both characters have found their soul mate, even though they were originally separated across time. (At this point, I wonder what Matheson’s wife thought about her writer/husband’s obsession with Maude Adams).
Possibly the most poignant moment of the movie is when Collier (played by a handsome Christopher Reeve aka 1980s Superman) is watching Elise posing for a publicity photograph. Elise catches Richard looking at her at the exact moment the photograph is taken and smiles radiantly. It’s this very photograph that Richard had obsessed over before he’d ever traveled back in time to meet Elisa. Time paradox MUCH? This is like becoming obsessed with the Mona Lisa, only to realize that enigmatic smile of hers painted by Leonardo de Vinci was actually directed at you. Whoa.
Collier has a confrontation with Elise’s manager but everything is resolved and they end up in bed together. During a post-coital conversation, Richard finds a present-day (1970s) coin in his pants pocket and finds himself whisked back to the present. It’s a gut-wrenching moment. What follows for poor Richard is constant attempts to re-focus and return to the past, hence the title Bid Time Return but all for naught. Richard dies in the present, unable to return to the past and to his lover, Elise. In the movie, he’s reunited with Elise a la a scene reminiscent of Titanic’s Rose and Jack reuniting in front of the clock at the top of the stairs.
After his death, a doctor claims that Collier’s time traveling was all in his own mind (classic Twilight Zone shenanigans) but his brother believes everything Collier wrote in his journal about his time travel experience and publishes it for the world to decide themselves.
Finally,
Somewhere in Time only scores 5.7/10 on Rotten Tomatoes with generally unfavorable reviews, still, if you have a heart and love time travel love stories, you might really like this movie. Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour have some genuine chemistry on screen and Matheson’s story packs a serious tear jerking wallop. If you want a taste of the movie, here’s a fan-made preview.
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