Thursday, May 13, 2021

THE TIME MACHINE

The Time Traveler in his machine
THE TIME MACHINE (1960). Director: George Pal. 

A Victorian-era scientist in England (Rod Taylor) insists to a gathering of his friends, that he has invented a machine that can break through the fourth dimension -- time. Using his machine to go into the future, he witnesses more than one war and man's destruction of man. Trapped inside rock by a lava flow, he pushes way ahead to the far-flung future and winds up in 802,701 A.D. There he discovers that the human race has divided into two segments: the mindless, bovine Eloi and the meat-eating Morlocks, who live underground, care for the Elois' needs, and use them for their food supply. Weena (Yvette Mimieux), a pretty Eloi, is saved from drowning by the scientist, and shows signs of the humanity that seems to have been bred out of people in this era. 

Morlocks!
The Time Machine is a colorful and entertaining picture, although it is essentially a kiddie version of H. G. Wells' novel, which was a masterpiece of both horror as well as of science fiction. The best sequences in the film, which still hold up today, are the depictions of time travel done with time-lapse photography and the like. The Morlocks, alas, look more like the boogie men of Laurel and Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers than they do the dark and sinister creatures of Wells' brilliant book. Rod Taylor plays an undeveloped part as well as possible; Mimieux is effective in the nearly mute role of Weena. The film is well photographed by Paul Vogel, and boasts an eerie and attractive score by Russell Garcia. Four years earlier Taylor appeared in another time travel movie, a rip off of Time Machine, entitled World Without End. 

Verdict: Fun, but hopefully not the last film version of Wells' great novel. ***. 

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4 comments:

  1. angelman66May 14, 2021 at 12:31 PM

    Another childhood favorite…loved Rod Taylor in this and in The Birds, a movie that still scares me! As I get older, I realise Mr. Taylor was quite a hunk of man. Back when I first saw these, he seemed like a father figure.
    -C

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  2. WilliamMay 14, 2021 at 1:14 PM

    I agree! Yeah, he was a handsome dude and a good actor. He later wound up on "Falcon Crest" (with Jane Wyman) as night-time soaps became the go-to place for fading movie stars. If I recall correctly, he was superb on a classic episode of "Twilight Zone" before he was famous.

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  3. Mark ShawNovember 3, 2023 at 2:40 PM

    This is another one it's impossible for me to be objective about, it's such a beloved childhood memory. I actually recall being disappointed in Wells' novel when I got around to it--compared to the movie, it seemed much less satisfying and Wells left an important plot point up in the air, that being of Weena disappearing half way through the novel. I presumed she was killed when she was separated from the time traveller in the forest fire. It's never made clear what happened to her, but to this appalled kid (I think I was around 12 or 13 when I read it) that seemed rather a big deal. And then the time traveller apparently just forgets all about her. Wow. She must not have looked anything like the film's adorable Yvette Mimieux, is all I can say.

    I liked this review!

    --Mark

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  4. WilliamNovember 3, 2023 at 3:04 PM

    Thanks, Mark. Actually I think Wells/ the Time Traveler does think about poor Weena at the very end of the novel when he finds her white flowers in his pocket. I had always assumed she was killed in the fire, or else captured and eaten by the Morlocks. Since the movie was primarily for kids, they couldn't have her killed off. In any case the time traveler doesn't think of Weena in any kind of sexual or romantic terms -- she's like a pathetic animal, although he remarks at the end that she still had a very human-like gratitude for his saving her from drowning.

    The movie is fun whatever its flaws, but I will always prefer the novel.

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