1979's "Time After Time" marked the directorial debut of Nicholas Meyer, previously the author of "The Seven Percent Solution," which featured the fictional Sherlock Holmes encountering the actual Sigmund Freud. Here, we are treated to real life novelist and 'women's liberation' advocate H. G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) actually building his legendary time machine in the year 1893, eager to test it until another Whitechapel murder is executed by Jack the Ripper, not surprisingly revealed to be Wells' best friend and chess rival John Leslie Stevenson (David Warner). Only after authorities leave does Wells discover how easily the Ripper vanished into thin air, stealing his prized time machine to make his way to modern day San Francisco in 1979, a period that Wells predicted would become 'Utopia.' Trailing his quarry in a manner befitting Sherlock Holmes (a pseudonym he actually uses when dealing with police), Wells appears in a museum display of works he has yet to achieve, and in exchanging pound notes for American currency meets a very liberated, independent divorcee working the Bank of London counter, Amy Robbins (Mary Steenburgen), who instantly takes a shine to this literally lost soul to not only show him the town but take him to her bed in highly amusing fashion. Meanwhile, the Ripper has taken to this new world like a duck takes to water ("90 years ago I was a freak, today I'm an amateur"), but Wells, in a nice allusion to their many chess matches, has the means to figure out how he can foil his rival, unless Amy winds up his next victim. David Warner is very good but in his low key, genteel way doesn't possess the kind of menace the part calls for, so the thriller aspects are overshadowed by the love story, which in this case was true to life, Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen proving that on screen chemistry works even better off camera as they were wed for 10 years and had two children. It was a delightful change of pace for the often villainous McDowell, exuding a wonderful sense of wit and likability that is nicely paired with screen novice Steenburgen, her only previous film Jack Nicholson's "Goin' South," an unconventional beauty perfectly cast as a fully emancipated woman escaping a miserable first marriage to become a genuine free spirit ('free love' indeed!). It is the two stars together that carry this picture beyond its science fiction origins for a fully fleshed out romance under most unusual circumstances, concluding with a most telling line: "every age is the same, it's only love that makes any of them bearable."
Review of Time After Time
