|
|
Rating:  - Time Capsule
This movie collects many of the ideas and fears of its own time, and straps them together with pieces of Wells's original story. There are some nice spots here, esp. Pal's signature stop animation in some of the time travel sequences, but not enough to save this from being only ordinary.
The 1950s-isms stand out quite clearly. The Eloi are Wells's gentle hedonists, playing ineffectually in a garden world. Here, they're all young, dressed in pastel tunics, coiffed, and blond - as if only blonds could be beautiful people. Complete lack of children in this world leaves me wondering where the next generation would come from, but issues of reproduction don't suit this movie's era. Wells's troglodytic Morlocks become monster-movie standards: green, clumsy, with glowing eyes. And, to satisfy the moral needs of the time, characters identified as good defeat the ones identified as evil, without much though to where the good guys' next meal might come from.
This movie was made in the 1950s, so the threat of nuclear war has to figure somewhere in the story. Missile silos come to mind when we see the air shafts into the Morlock's underground city. The big presence, though, is the air raid sirens, co-opted as triggers for a bizarre but recognizable instinct.
This is a fair bit of nostalgic entertainment. It loses all the social imact of Wells's story, and adds features that don't really add much. Despite that, it's still a fair popcorn movie.
//wiredweird
Rating:  - Great story line and clasic rendition
This video is a classic of its era. Good special effects that accompany a pretty good story.
Rating: - Please Make a Time Machine Faithful to the Book
As a book to movie purist, why can't either movie address the main contention in the source? The Eloi created the Morlocks! The Eloi were the wealthy class, and the Morlocks were the workers. Any socialist philosophy aside (and I am far from a socialist), it makes the book highly engaging, because those who you would normally root for (the Eloi), and the villains (the Morlocks), it turns out the monsters are the victims. Great stuff (which is why it's a great book). Why must Hollywood, both in 1960 and 2005 (or whenever that other tripe was made) simplify and elimininate this crucial point! Well, you want something much worse, check out On the Beach, the great book, and then the god-awful 2000 and whatever version! WRETCHED!!!
Rating: - The Rime Machine
This is still the classic movie - saw it as a pre-teen and loved it then and it still brings back memories - the newer version does not compare with this classic - would not recomend it for small children
Rating: - 'I'm going back to my own time. I won't even bother to tell of the useless struggles of a hopeless future!'
Though the film has flaws, mostly on the corney side, I think it is safe to say that this is the best adaptation of one of H.G. Wells' novels to film yet produced.
Wells imaginatively projected the "class struggle" pondered by Marx (of the capitalist owners vs. workers without a share in the means of production) 800,000 years into the future. In this way, combining with Darwinian evolution, it becomes a struggle between two sub-species: the underground machine-lord cannibal "Morlocks" vs. the above ground, sunshine-loving "Eloi," who the Morlocks simply breed as cattle. In Wells' fancy, the differences between classes will become so extreme (assuming the absence of an earlier, political solution), there will eventually be an ironic ambiguity as to which class is really which.
To its merit, this is evident enough in the film; but the film adds to that a couple of dated (innaccurate) predictions concerning the "near" future (now past). The result is a risky and somewhat corney ride. Yet this addition is also fairly well off-set by the fact that the time traveller is allowed to start his journey from the late 19th century (and so from Wells' own time, as in the novel). The film here has a vivid, added dimesion of the curiosity of a time machine starting its career before high tech--evidently by the sheer genius of a lone inventor. (This device was used by subsequent time travel films--as well as by other Wells-to-film attempts, like The First Men in the Moon, but never as effectively.) In the end, the film successfully portrays a maverick and human hero (the time traveller, who is never quite at home in and so rises above any period of time)--one who the audience is at least allowed to hope for--without in any way compromising the scope of Wells' intent.
Perhaps it is even some return trip of the time traveller to those "horse and buggy" days which changes the innacurate "predictions" to recent history as we actually know it--a possibility plainly allowed for (though not shouted out) by the screenplay. A question for familiar viewers--would Filby really just let his son Jamie die and his store be destoyed, for apparently no good reason--after having received due warning?
The time-lapse photography for the time travel scenes are put to very good use. The visual appearance of the machine in the film, extrapolated from Wells' descriptions, is a remarkable feat of imagination and ingenuity, and is the envy of every true sci-fi buff. A scene where the time traveller takes a moment to gaze upon and walk about his creation before embarking on his first journey, looking on it with admiration, amazement and anticipation (as if the machine itself were a discovery more than an invention, seamlessly pregnant with the endless adventures it promises), is even breathtaking.
The Hollywood swashbuckling and boy-meets-girl aspects are present but not overblown. The wonder of time meets technology is intelligently dealt with, as is the wonder of a man who steps out of his own time. In this respect it is very fun to watch the time traveller try to kindle the spark of curiosity and wonder in the spiritually deadened descendents of the future, who are plainly depicted as having their forerunners stemming back as far as the late 1800's (the time traveller having had similar trouble at that time as well, trying to wake up closed-minded friends and aquaintances as he argues with them about the value of time-travel). The near-futility of his stuggle is very forceful, vivid and effective.
The casting is flawless and the acting is excellent, especially for the two main characters, the unnamed by Wells, "Time Traveler" (though very subtly given the cameo name in the film of H. George Wells--the first initial H. followed by "George Wells" only briefly appearing in shots of the time machine's control panel, where the inventor stylistically ingraved it--though his friends do call him George) and his tiny, delicate and fun-loving girlfriend from the future, Weena.
Incidentally, the 2002 Dreamworks remake is good, but really has nothing to do with Wells' novel. One nice twist is the albino and articulate Morlock. Weena is still pretty, but has nothing to do with Wells' novel--even her name gets changed to "Mara." The time machine itself is also good (very good), though it is impossible to believe it was constructed in 1899. Not so for the 1960 film; I believe it every time--"If someone had made a time machine in 1899 that somehow actually worked, that is what it would have looked like." Overall, in terms of sets and direction in the "remake," the distant future does not appear as distant and exotic as in the earlier film. Distorted beyond recognition in the 2002 remake is the foreboding, silent future image of the Sphinx, towering over the time traveller when he first arrives in the year 802,701. This image from the novel is present in 1960 film, and is intended to invoke the tantalizing theme of "the riddle of the Sphinx"--what is the difference between man and beast? Yet in this remake there are few mysteries. Overall, the film has the same failings, while at the same time being "maverick" gets reduced to the mundane, like wearing a hat not yet in style. Notably absent is the nearly-futile and perennial struggle of the hero.
Does the 1960 version solve the riddle of the Sphinx? I think it hints at a solution: at the end of the movie, the housekeeper, Mrs. Watchett (evidently a widow, but not evidently without children), befriending Filby, evidently wishes to keep the house light going in at least in one window (in case of the Time Traveller's return)--as such she also evidently represents the future Eloi; the scene is shot just as we must imagine that Weena is also awaiting the Time Traveller's return. It is his businessmen friends who become the Morlock--though Filby is the ambiguous go between.
|
|