Somewhere In Time - 1980

Is time travel possible? When you see this romantic drama you will wish it was possible.

Somewhere in Time is a 1980 romantic science fiction tragedy film directed by Jeannot Szwarc. It is a film adaptation of the 1975 novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer, Teresa Wright, and Bill Erwin.

Reeve plays Richard Collier, a playwright who becomes smitten by a photograph of a young woman at the Grand Hotel. Through self-hypnosis, he travels back in time to the year 1912 to find love with actress Elise McKenna (portrayed by Seymour). But her manager William Fawcett Robinson (portrayed by Plummer) fears that romance will derail her career and resolves to stop him.

The film is known for its musical score composed by John Barry. The eighteenth variation of Sergei Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini also runs throughout the film.

In the novel, Richard travels from 1971 to 1896 rather than 1980 to 1912. The setting is the Hotel del Coronado rather than the Grand Hotel. Unlike in the movie, he is dying from a brain tumor, and the book ultimately raises the possibility that the whole time-traveling experience is merely a series of hallucinations. The scene where the old woman hands Richard a pocket watch (which an older version of himself had given to her) does not appear in the book. Thus, the ontological paradox generated by this event (that the watch was never built, but simply exists eternally) is absent. In the book, it is two psychics, not William Fawcett Robinson, who anticipate Richard's appearance. And Richard's death at the end is brought about by his tumor, not heartbreak.

Although this movie was well received during its previews, it was widely derided by critics upon release, and it underperformed at the box office. In 2009, in an interview with WGN America, Jane Seymour stated "It was just a little movie...The Blues Brothers came out the same week and it was a $40 million budget, so Universal didn't really support it. There was also an actors strike, so Chris [Reeve] and I weren't allowed to publicise it. And they barely put it out because I don't think anyone really believed in it."

However, Somewhere in Time was popular in China and Hong Kong, where it played in theaters for over a year and was later re-released. It was also a big success in Brazil and still remains very popular. It has since earned a large and loyal following in later years, and the movie is now regarded by many to be a "cult classic."