Somewhere in Time (1980)

Never saw it but heard it's a classic. I'm just not a romance fan.

The lack of automobiles allowed on Mackinac Island, Michigan and the hotel added a romance to the shooting of the film.

Many couples were formed by the crew members (lots of sex on set).

The portrait of Elise that Richard First sees at the hotel, later autographed by Jane Seymour, is now at a restaurant/bar called Valley Inn located at 4557 Sherman Oaks Ave in Sherman Oaks, California.

I'm a sucker for time travel movies.

One of my all time favorite movies. I’m not romantic at all, but this movie is an exception.

I had just been to Mackinac Island the year before. So as a child I was really interested in seeing the movie! I really enjoyed it.

They should remake it as a gay love story.

My Mom's favorite movie. We got to meet Christopher Reeve and she got to tell him and he was so kind and gracious to her. Both are gone now and my Mom never got to Mackinac Island but she did have that lovely memory of meeting him.

[quote]The lack of automobiles allowed on Mackinac Island, Michigan and the hotel added a romance to the shooting of the film.

Except for the stench of horse poop on every corner. Just went there last year, total tourist trap, crap stores, expensive hotels, unfriendly locals and with over 600 horses, it should really be called poop island at this point.

Oh R9 you must have been a poop shoveler in a previous life.

Life was a lot stinkier 100 years ago.

About to say they must have shot it in the Midwest for those guys to debut in it as they were all Chicago actors at the time.

The Grand Hotel has suites named after First Ladies. As of yet there is no Vairst Ladiee Melania Suite.

I stayed at the Grand Hotel 2 years ago. We had the Jane Seymour Room. It was an interesting experience. Most of the guests are seniors with a lot of money and everything is done old school. Jackets and tie are required for men in the dining room.The hotel really is a trip back in time. This movie is one of my great guilty pleasures.

It was on one of the cable channels just yesterday, I hadn't seen it in years. It's schmaltzy but enjoyable.

Chris Reeve sho was pretty.

I wonder if the Eisenhower Suite is done in pink and dental office green?

Joe Bob Briggs had a TNT show called Hollywood Saturday Night where he'd watch a movie and comment on it and he watched this one. I mostly remember him making fun of Reeve's pursuit of Seymour by saying "Great. More staring."

One of the few period romance movies that has a cult following.

Gorgeous couple

Somewhere in Time Montage

I grew up in Florida but had family in Michigan. We visited the island every couple of years and stayed at the Grand Hotel. The island is pretty, but it's also boring as Hell IMO.

R21 shows how much of the movie has no dialogue

Reeves was OK sometimes, but I can't stand Seymour in anything. The Richard Matheson novel is called "Bid Time Return"; he was inspired to write the book when he saw this photograph of the stage actress Maude Adams and researched her life and career.

I had no impression of Jane Seymour until I saw her castle.

Maude Adams, who was lesbian. Woohoo.

I saw this twice in the theater when it came out. Christopher Reeve was hot, and the film was lovely. A piece of trivia I had never noticed, but confirmed with a recent viewing: In the sequences in the past, the characters in the background of the outdoor sequences are recreating famous Impressionist paintings. It's a wonderful thi wng when you notice it!

The film's score is really very important, both to the plot and the viewer's enjoyment. In the novel, the character was a fan of Gustav Mahler, but Mahler's long musical phrases just couldn't "get there" in the short times allotted for musical underscoring, so John Barry wrote an original score. He had just lost his parents, and said that the score was the most personal, and least typical, of all his work. The soundtrack album is one of the few that makes for a satisfying listening experience on its own. (For a few others, try The Trouble With Harry and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.)

I was 20 when it came out - and as "uncool" as it was to go see it (I was in college and wasn't out yet) , I had a crush (still do) on Christopher Reeve. I loved the film, the romance, to costumes, the beautiful scenery, the gorgeous setting and the unforgettable score. I even feel for Jane Seymour. I got the soundtrack on cassette tape to play in my car. A beautiful film you can really disappear in...

[quote]I wonder if the Eisenhower Suite is done in pink and dental office green?

Yes, and it comes with a 12-inch black dildo next to the Gideon Bible.

Jane was never lovelier , victorian was her look ! I always said this movie is the reason I fell in love with my first husband . I was heavily into it when I met him ,and he loved it too. Fate I tell you ! Such a sweet movie ,could you imagine them trying to make it today ?

The big clam to fame on that island is homemade fudge. No really! So I find this particularly ironic.

The coin!

My best friend and I went to see it because we thought it was going to be a cool sci-fi/time travel movie. Man were we ever wrong.

Love it. Both the score written for the film as well as the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini are stunning.

I haven't see Somewhere in time in years, but I do remember what a lovely film it was. I look forward to seeing it again. I visited Mackinac Island very briefly in the late 80s.

R14 it sounds like the Greenbrier of the North.

[quote] Just went there last year, total tourist trap, crap stores, expensive hotels, unfriendly locals and with over 600 horses, it should really be called poop island at this point.

That's what they called it this last year bot only when Mike Pence visited the island.

*"motorcade," not "motorcase"

So good...

Hard to believe that movie is now 40 years old.

R14 were all the waiters from Jamaica at the Grand Hotel?

Christopher Reeve looked like a painting then.

R36 That is exactly right- except it wasnt as nice. Greenbrier is in a class by itself.

Reeve turned down a one million dollar paycheck (which is like 3 million in today's dollars) to do American Gigolo to work for scale to do this film (Somewhere in Time) - this film was so low budget that Reeve was sharing a dressing room with Jane Syemour and Christopher Plummer.

I love this movie, but one plot element that always drove me crazy was the origin of that pocket watch. The elderly version of Jane Seymour's character gives the watch to Christopher Reeve (saying, "Come back to me"), and he eventually leaves it with her before being hurtled back into his own time period. That watch was never actually manufactured!

R41 No. It isnt like a cruise ship.

That’s the trouble with time travel tales, there are always plot holes.

Absolutely one of the most lush and romantic movie scores, along with Summer of '42 and Out of Africa. I didn't think the respective movies were that great, but if you like this type of orchestration and overwhelming emotion they are hard to beat.

The music really made this movie. Oh, it's a good movie, but John Barry's score just made it much better. So lush.

Several of the soap operas used some of his music from SIT for scenes in the early 1980s. All My Children especially used it a lot. This was around the time when the soaps expanded their music budget and began using popular songs fairly regularly since they could now afford the licensing fees.

William H. Macy was in it? Haven't seen it in decades. I grew up in Michigan so it was a big deal it was filmed here.

Christopher Reeve was the only man that looked totally and unquestionably gay, but wasn't/

That is what killed this

Wasn't Jane Seymour very much a TV actress by 1980? How did she get the role?

This was on cable last night and I watched some if it, though I’ve seen it before. Reeve was at the height of his beauty, and was still carrying that Superman bulk on his frame. He looked dashing in that tan suit.

If you drew a Venn diagram for all things fraus and DLers love, corny movies like this one would be where these two groups overlap.

But I'm happy to say I'm an exception: I found the whole thing so cheesy I turned it off after a few minutes.

He turned down Body Heat and American Gigolo for this??

I remember my cub scout pack getting to go to the second run movie theater one year after highway clean up, and we all got really excited that we could go see "Somewhere in Time" because the TV ads were really scary.

We thought we were going to see "Time after Time" about Jack the Ripper, but we wound up at this one.

Needless to say, I was the only kid in the group who was OK with it.

I still get those movies confused though. I wound up seeing "Time after Time" years later....and it was pretty creepy.

I think the movie was not a success when it originally came out and only became popular as a result of it being shown on cable TV.

IIRC the director said in an interview that he wanted the film to be much longe,r but preview audiences and/or the studio wanted a shorter movie, and so it was this shorter film that was released. I think he hoped he'd be able to work on an extended cut of the film (to be released on video) that more closely reflection his original vision. But apparently that was never to be the case.

R56 Awwww that is too funny!

Christopher Reeve was GORGEOUS in this movie.

My brother, a minor film critic in New York at the time, informed me that preview audiences didn’t understand the beginning. So, six months after shooting had been completed, they went back and filmed the scenes with Teresa Wright.

At 15, I lusted after Christopher Reeves in Superman, but I fell in love with Christopher Reeve in this movie, when I first saw it on video. It was the combination of his incredible beauty, the time period, romance, and, yes, Jane Seymour. I shed a tear again, watching the final scene. Thanks, R7.

Loved this film. I have always wanted to stay at that hotel.

At a screening in L.A when the movie first opened., they passed out buttons with "Is it you?" on them. I kept my button pinned on my backpack for the longest time.

Who should star in the gay remake?

[quote]I found the whole thing so cheesy I turned it off after a few minutes.

I think the movie's cheesiness is part of its unique charm. It's a romantic fantasy that doesn't pretend to be anything else, so it isn't afraid to "go there," as we would say today.

What did she mean when she said "Is it you?"

[quote]What did she mean when she said "Is it you?"

Jane Seymour reveals to Christopher Reeve later in the movie that her mentor, played by Christopher Plummer, had always warned her that one day a man would come along who would cause her to abandon her acting career. So I assume she's asking whether Reeve's character is that man. Or maybe she's just asking in a general way whether he's "the one" she has been waiting for.

George Wendt's part got cut out. William H Macy is blink or you miss him, if you don't know enough to look for Macy in the first scene you would never know he is in it.

I remember when it first came to HBO, that's when it became popular.

It seemed to be shown constantly on HBO/Showtime back in the '80s. That's when I first saw it.

[quote]Christopher Reeves

There’s no “s” on the end.

[quote]There’s no “s” on the end.

I think some people confuse him with TV's Superman, George Reeves. Either that or "Reeve" just sounds as though it should have an S on the end, the way some people put an S at the end of Sally Field.

I guess a "spoiler alert" isn't really necessary for a 40-year-old movie, but I wondered why, at the end, the mere sight of a 1979 penny was enough to break the mental concentration that was keeping him in 1912 and hurtle him back to 1980. I knew he was told by the time travel expert at the beginning that he must rid himself of any physical ties to his present, but the front of a Lincoln penny looked the same in 1912 as in 1980, except for the year. There's no other point in the movie where his remaining in the past seems at all tenuous.

R51 Reeve was outed on Howard Stern's radio show.

He had on a gay hustler who said he slept with a bunch of famous celebrities (the hustler made it sound like he was part of an exclusive club).

Stern tuned it into a guessing game & pressed him for client's names but settled on initials.

The hustler thought for a second & said "CR" & Stern shot back (in a microsecond) Christopher Reeve (which led me to believe that Stern already knew he was gay/bi & used this moment to out him).

The hustler's face started going red but no other famous actor (living) had his initials at the time.

They need to remake this with Henry Cavill. Stat.

Then they might as well remake it with a block of wood, R74. In truth, the wood may bring more depth to the role.

I worked on the set of the movie version of "Deathtrap" and sometimes heard crew members mentioning gay rumors about Christopher Reeve, but I assumed at the time it was because he was playing a gay character and kissed Michael Caine in one scene. It was 1982, and simply playing a gay character might have been enough to start such rumors.

SPOILERS:

I would have liked to see more of the old Elise (Jane Seymour's character played by another actress) in the beginning of the movie. How did she figure out Richard was still alive? Did she see his name on a poster or in the newspaper advertising his college play?

When Richard (Christopher Reeve) found the penny what did Elise see? Did he just disappear? Did he fade out? Or did he die and leave a body there?

[quote]When Richard (Christopher Reeve) found the penny what did Elise see? Did he just disappear? Did he fade out? Or did he die and leave a body there?

This doesn't answer your question, but in the book on which the movie is based, "Bid Time Return," Elise is asleep when Richard is returned to the present and so doesn't see anything. In the movie, the camera work seems to suggest he fades away. Pretty sure he didn't leave a body, or else he wouldn't have returned to 1980.

Also in the book, the character of Richard has a brain tumor, so it's suggested that his time travel might be a kind of hallucination caused by his condition. At the end, it's the brain tumor that kills him, not a broken heart.

Interesting r78, thanks

Reeves wasnt the right actor to play the lead in either Body Heat or American Gigolo. He didn’t exactly exude raw sexuality.

The script and acting were all over the place, but the entire aesthetic of the film was really extraordinarily beautiful, especially for 40 years ago.

It was a very low budget film. You can tell in a lot of scenes there’s not a huge attention to detail and I imagine the set dressing barely extends beyond the frame.

It’s hard to believe it was nominated for best costumes and not original score.

The Korean, the Chinese and the Japanese have made 100 remakes of this movies already.

[quote]I worked on the set of the movie version of "Deathtrap" and sometimes heard crew members mentioning gay rumors about Christopher Reeve, but I assumed at the time it was because he was playing a gay character and kissed Michael Caine in one scene. It was 1982, and simply playing a gay character might have been enough to start such rumors.

I was supposed to visit the set in the Hamptons but Regan was shot the day I was supposed to go and it was cancelled.

Christopher Reeve had a great profile to play Dick Tracy

Is a Jew?

He got a 70 second standing ovation.

[quote]Reeves was OK sometimes, but I can't stand Seymour in anything. The Richard Matheson novel is called "Bid Time Return"; he was inspired to write the book when he saw this photograph of the stage actress Maude Adams and researched her life and career.

So he researched a lesbian, but ended up making a heterosexual movie. Sounds about right.

[quote] He turned down Body Heat and American Gigolo for this??

Yes because Reeve considered himself a "serious" actor (despite Superman) - in later years he would say he regretted not going the commercial route (when he was struggling to get work)

I would’ve wanted to see him in American Gigolo if for nothing more than to see his super peen and for him to be strutting around in those snug dress pants.

[quote]I was supposed to visit the set in the Hamptons but Regan was shot the day I was supposed to go and it was cancelled.

Exterior shooting in the Hamptons was minimal. Except for those scenes and some shots at the Music Box Theatre (where the stage version of "Deathtrap" was still playing), most of the shooting was done on a set (designed by Tony Walton, Julie Andrews' ex) in the old Pathe studios on East 106th St. in Manhattan.

I love this guy’s passion for the movie and the filming locations...

Jane Seymour visits Grand Hotel for Somewhere in Time weekend

Jane mentions the fudge