Daily Archives: February 5, 2023

Time After Time
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
Written by Nicholas Meyer; story by Karl Alexander and Steve Hayes
1979/US
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon rental

H.G. Wells: Every age is the same. It’s only love that makes any of them bearable

This fun thriller is a little bit science fiction, a little bit action, and a little bit romance. Also, one of the best movie portraits of my favorite City, San Francisco, a year before I lived there.

It is 1893 London. H.G. Wells (Malcom McDowell) demonstrates his time machine to his guests. The police burst into the house in search of Jack the Ripper. Unbeknownst to anyone, he is their friend John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner) and he has left evidence in his medical bag. Jack boards the time machine and takes off for 1979.

Because he does not have the “no return” key, the machine returns to 1893 and Wells boards it in pursuit of the Ripper. He finds himself in 1979 San Francisco. There is a lot to get used to and this new world is surely not the Utopia Wells dreamed of. Wells does fit in well with the 1979 fashion vibe in his Victorian clothes.

One of the first things he needs to do is change money. He goes to a bank with his gold guineas and attempts the exchange with manager Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen). She immediately tries to pick him up.

The same night the two become a couple. Jack, who has continued his serial killings in the City, will not rest until he extracts the “no return” key from Wells. The rest of the movie consists of the cat and mouse adventures as the two men pursue each other. This puts Amy’s life in grave peril.

This is a very solid popcorn movie which I really enjoyed. It was so much fun seeing all the San Francisco locations. You always see the bay and the hills in movies but rarely so many of the City’s other sights.

Trailer

The Missing Title Tune – OMG I love this song

1979 was one of those great years for movies as can be seen by the sheer number of films of that year showing up on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

We lost a number of great directors that year including Jean Renoir, Nicholas Ray, George Seaton, Dorothy Arzner, and Ernest B. Schoedsak.  Other notables who died in 1979 were  Nino Rota, Mary Pickford, Jim Hutton, John Wayne, Jean Seberg, Dmitri Tiompkin, Merle Oberon, Ann Dvorak, and Joan Blondell.

Rosanna Arquette, Ted Danson, Matt Dillon, Danny Glover, Mickey Rourke, and Patrick Swayze made their film debuts.

Just some incidents in a tumultuous year.  Iran became an Islamic Republic upon the arrival of the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini and the ouster of the Shah.  63 U.S. Embassy employees were held hostage by “students” for 444 days starting November 4.  The crisis in Iran sparked an international oil crisis which saw gasoline prices soaring.  The first Black government took office in Rhodesia, whose name was changed to Zimbabwe.  The Sandinista National Liberation Front took power in Nicaragua.  Islamic extremists took pilgrims hostage during the Haj in Mecca – 250 people were killed.  A series of accidents at the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania caused a partial melt-down.

The Billboard top single of the year was “My Sharona” by The Knack.  “The Stories of John Cheever” won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature.  “Buried Child” by Sam Shepard won for Drama.  The Ayatollah Khomeini was Time magazine’s Man of the Year.

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Here’s the list of films I will pick from for 1979 viewing.