The Time Machine (1960)

The Time Machine (George Pal, 1960) We are all time-travelers, really, moving forward into the future one second at a time, for that is the natural order of things. The trouble comes when we want a little more speed...or go back, which is unnatural and out of order. Perhaps there is a core-wisdom to not want to live in the past or skip ahead to our future. But, folks have been writing time-travel stories since the Mahabharata (if we're to believe Wikipedia) because wouldn't it be nice to go back in time to meet this person, or to right a wrong, or because just now you thought of the perfect come-back you wish you had then.

It is speculated that time slows down, relatively, the closer you get to the speed of light (299,792,458 meters per second—it's just not a good idea; it's the law) or, more recently conceived, to a massive gravity source—say, a black hole. And there is speculation that by going faster than the speed of light, one could out-race time and catch up with it (as if it was a single-stream device, like a TIVO). Anyway, it worked (or will work) on "Star Trek."* 

Either way, back, or forth, it seems it takes a lot of effort and energy for so little time.

It's all theory, though. Tick-tick-tick is the speed of things. At least for now.

And...now.

In George Pal's version of the H.G. Wells novel, the time is January 5th, 1900. H. George Wells (Rod Taylor) stumbles (just in time) into the pre-arranged meeting with his friends and acquaintances, David Filby (Alan Young), Dr. Philip Hillyer (Sebastian Cabot), Anthony Bridewell (Tom Helmore), and Walter Kemp (the ubiquitous Whit Bissell), and he looks bruised and bedraggled. He has a story to tell them about how he got that way—over his last few hours—and it has a lot to do with their meeting the week before—one that ended with much scoffing and condescension about George's crazy ideas. 

At that meeting (as he reminds them), he posited the invention of a machine to cross "the fourth dimension"—time. He showed them a model, which—at the press of a switch—disappeared, and explaining to his gob-smacked and uncomprehending friends who wondered where it went that it was not a question of "where" it went but "when." The little model is still there, in that room, it's just in another time—where they are not. Philosophically, George is concerned that, with the Boer War going on and strife everywhere, that the answers to man's struggles must be in the future and he intends to see.

To a man, they are practical...and skeptical. His ideas and skills would be better put to helping the war effort, but George cannot be dissuaded. Fearing for his mind, Filby encourages George to see in the New Year with his family, but Wells refuses but assures his friend that he won't walk beyond his door that night. And, indeed, he won't. George decides to do that thing that all visionaries should be wary of—experimenting on oneself—and tests his full-size version of his time machine to travel, tentatively, into the future. He stops in 1917 and things have changed a bit—he monitors changes in fashion from a mannequin in a shop window across the street. Taking a tentative look outside, he runs into a person he thinks is Filby—but it's actually his son. Filby is dead and buried, and his son has just returned from The Great War. That doesn't auger well for Wells' dream of a better world, so he presses on.

A second trial takes him past WWII, where his time machine feels the effects of the blitz and he sees his rural town become surrounded by skyscrapers. Stopping in 1966, he's just "in time" to witness a nuclear bombardment that he only manages to escape with his machine. Volcanic activity leaves him sealed in a cave and he punches forward through time until erosion has taken its time and he can see daylight again. He stops at  October 12, 802701. And the world has changed considerably.

Oh, there's oxygen, conveniently—the nuclear winter and volcanic activity seems to have subsided and formed a livable atmosphere after 802,000 years. The Earth that he encounters is verdant, lush, and judging from the life-forms  appears to be in Malibu by way of Logan's Run.** Everybody is in their early 20's, are model-proportioned, and have sun-bleached blond hair (they're also extremely passive preferring to hang out by the river, and if someone falls in and is in danger of drowning, nobody helps—perhaps they're federal employees!)

But, these aren't the only bipeds roaming about in the 803rd century, merely the ones who see the light of day. Life has bifurcated to include another life-form that lives underground in a subterranean power-plant of tunnels and caves. These are the Morlocks, who prey—and feast—upon the youngsters (who should be called "Veal," but are, instead, called the "Eloi," who are beckoned to the underground chambers by a summons from a pyramid-like structure resembling a temple.

George is aghast at this, and by the Eloi's compliance; when a herd of Eloi is beckoned (including a comely Eloi he has become besotted with (played by Yvette Mimieux), he invades the Morlock Masonic and goes all "Spartacus" on them, inspiring a revolt against the Morlocks and saving the Eloi to return to a life of..."whatever" (that's exactly what they seem to be returning to...a life of "what-everrr") Despite his feelings for "Weena"—as he calls her—he decides to power up his time-machine and return to his present time...for a time, anyway.

It's a good little adaptation of the Wells book, full of fine antiquated period detail and adolescent thrills—if you're not thinking about it too much—which is a mark of the films of George Pal, ever-concerned with the whiz-bang image (effects are usually done in brisk stop-motion sequences) and, if there's a message, best to leave it immersed in sub-text or the basic DNA of the source. And Rod Taylor fit the bill for the type of just-charismatic-enough-for-the-budget star. Taylor hailed from Australia—adept enough that you'd never know it from the expert lack of accent (you could swear he was Canadian!), filtered down by years of stage, film and television work (this was his first starring role)—and makes a fine adventurer to identify with.

The film was remade in 2002 with Guy Pearce, and Nicholas Meyer made an excellent "cousin" film, Time After Time, in 1979. We'll be looking at the latter...some time.

Now, a final note about time-travel: don't dress lightly. 

The trouble with the depictions that we've seen is that they're a bit myopic—at least according to professional physics buzz-kill Dr. Neil Degrass Tyson. All time machines we've seen have been neatly rooted to the ground (at least, The Time Machine acknowledged that the very surroundings that it existed on would change over time). But, even as we're moving through time, so is the Earth. So is the Universe. 

But let's simplify it. In the same way that a plane has to aim for the spot its destination will be at the time of arrival, you also have to do on a more cosmic scale. The Earth travels in its orbit around the sun at 29.78 km/s. So, that means if we wanted to travel, let's say, a day in the future, we should take a rocket to the point where the Earth would be in 24 hours, which would be 1,598,784 miles down the ecliptic. Say we did travel 24 hours in time; without compensating for the constant movement of the Universe, we would end our time-journey with the Earth "'way over there", and we'd be gasping for air before our lungs would explode...because we'd be in space.

Always wear a space-suit when time travelling, kids (and take PLENTY of oxygen) because you may know WHEN you'll show up, but you might not know WHERE.

"Missed it by that much..."

* Michael Crichton's "Timeline" proposed a simpler, more catastrophic solution to time-travel; it can't exist. "Time" doesn't flow as is the conception of pre-quantum time-travel stories—"Time doesn't pass; we pass" says a tech in it—and that what has been more romantically termed "time travel" is actually space-travel to another dimension in the multi-verse that has branched off. One could "travel" to those alternative branches by atomizing the human body and, upon reaching that dimension, reconstructing the physical form from its genetic map. Sounds really, really complicated, but, again, it worked "so well" on "Star Trek." 

Transporter accident as imagined by the late, great Mort Drucker

* I didn't know this until I was doing some research on Pal, but he was trying to get a "Logan's Run" adaptation as early as 1968.

Vertigo

A recent Facebook Note request asked me to pick my fifteen favorite films. The usual "Anytime movies" were there, and a few others that have crossed my path since I started writing about movies. 

But as with any list, what was most fascinating to me was...the ones that were missing. I've noticed this before when I did the "Anytime Movie" series; there were so many things not there—it's always the frustration I feel when making lists (and thus, why I refrain from doing them).

This led me to considering the film-artists who did not make the cut, and highlighting those films that have had such an impact on me—that I've fallen in love with, that have stayed with me, burrowing into my brain, and eliciting thoughts and emotions unique to those films. The observations are purely personal (aren't they all?), and why I call this new series of neglected films "My Favorites."

Due to the nature of this particular movie, this article will contain SPOILERS 

 that will actually destroy your enjoyment of the first-time viewing experience.  If you haven't seen Vertigo (and, really... what is keeping you?), you should not proceed further.  And to paraphrase Hitchcock's favorite tease: "No one will be seated after the article has begun." This is your last warning.

"What Is This Thing Called Love" asks the old song (a favorite of mine) and I especially love the inclusion of the word "thing" to describe it. What IS Love? Why is it so powerful? Why is it an obsession for film-makers, and their audiences (and for that matter, the scribes of centuries past), to the point where when we think about Love "these days," it's the sort "like in the movies," (which should set off alarm bells to anyone doubting film's veracity—ever seen an accurate movie on a true story you love?). Love in the movies is all-good, an all-consuming passion to be followed blindly, "the bestest thing in the world," that makes us better people (better-looking, too), sweetens our coffee, shines our shoes, puts a spring in our step, and makes us orgasm simultaneously, while the metaphorical ocean-waves crash over us. Orchestral swell and fade to black (before the complications happen).

'Kay... But it's become SUCH a movie-cliché (and aren't cliché's supposed to be such because they're true?) that movie-makers now "cut to the chase"...almost literally. In the weaker efforts, people in movies fall in love willy-nilly, without doubt, without resistance, and without staring at the phone for hours at a time, wondering "why aren't they calling?" It is effortless love, like falling off a love-log, with no pain, no pangs, no problems. 

As Randy Newman (or Joe Cocker) warbles "They don't know what love is."

I like movies that question love. I like movies that question anything, but questioning love makes me sit up and take notice...which happens rarely. I generally just slump in my movie-seat during romantic comedies (or romantic tragedies, for that matter), ticking off the "meet-cute," the "song-montage," "the-rough-road," and the "happily-ever-after," so rare is the occurrence of a film that will question, even cross-examine, love, its origins, its changes in form, or its outcomes.

Alfred Hitchcock made movies in an era where cinematic love was that kind of easy, but he usually liked to sprinkle some salt in with the sugar. There was no easy path for love in his films, in fact he liked to set up complications for the lovers to overcome—be they heterosexual or homosexual—and his least "typical" film, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, is all about a married couple divorcing and trying to find the path back together, as much as they don't want to. So, here's Vertigo, which is as pure a love story as Hitchcock ever made despite its deceptively fantastical thriller plot, and it finds the director adapting a novel by the authors of Diabolique (which Hitchcock wanted to film), who might have been writing it precisely for this director, so emblematic of his work are their themes. Hitchcock took a story of a man hampered with weakness (in this case, acrophobia, fear of heights and thus, fear of falling), and combined it with his own penchant for re-shaping actresses in his own singular fetishistic way to make one of his most personal films. He'd hoped to lure his favorite actress, Grace Kelly, back from Monaco to star in it, but she was dedicated to her fairy-tale marriage to a handsome prince, and declined. Hitchcock never liked fairy-tales, but this is as close as his sensibilities would go. However, it is more than that. It is a mystery. It is a thriller. It is a psychological study. It is a ghost story. But, most of all, it is a love story...with a bottomless void at its heart.

The first shot of the story—a straight line bi-sects the screen...

A hand comes up in mid-frame and breaks that line—a man climbs a ladder.

Vertigo-proper—aside from the hallucinogenic Title sequence—begins with an undefined image; a murky sky bisected horizontally by a line. In the first movement of the shot, a hand comes up and grabs it; it is the rung of a ladder, the hand belonging to a criminal making an escape from the police and the protagonist, police detective "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stewart). A straight-lined pursuit across roof-tops is only temporarily interrupted by the chase-participants' leap across a void—over an open alley-way between buildings. Everybody makes it with some difficulty, except Scottie.

He is caught suspended, on the brink of a bending gutter on a crumbling cornice, and we experience what he experiences—a change of perception. It is "the vertigo shot"—an ingenious combination of optics and camera movement, that bends and changing the view within itself, creating a telescoping tunnel-image. Foreground and background separate and stretch, taking a rudimentary shot of depth, and making it collapse downward—a suspended fall that increases the distance between Scottie and his death. The shot represents fear and the character's frailty, vertigo, in which heights cause a disorienting dizziness. Scottie watches in horror as a police officer, who offers a helping hand, loses his footing and falls to his death. 

The sequence ends with Scottie, still hanging, the situation unresolved. We never see how he gets out of it.

It is some time later, and Scottie's vertigo has forced his retirement from the San Francisco police force. Out of friendship, curiosity, and a detective's love of a mystery, he takes on a freelance job for an old school chum he's lost track of, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster thinks his wife Madeleine (Kim Novak) is going insane; she's become obsessed, maybe even possessed, by an ancestor, Carlotta Valdez, who committed suicide. The job is simple: follow the wife, find out what he can and report back to Elster. One look at Madeleine is all Scottie needs. He follows her obsessive path seeking Carlotta, and follows her, and follows her...

...seemingly to the ends of the Earth, or, in this case, the Golden Gate Park. He is horrified to find Elster's worst fears confirmed: Madeleine jumps into the bay.

Scottie plunges in to save her, and like so much of his path in Vertigo, it's a straight line right to his heart, as his occupational obsession turns into identification and romantic obsession—the curse of so many movie detectives. He falls in love with Madeleine. Falls...in love. And along the way, the straight lines and lateral paths that Scottie travels then become supplanted by something else throughout his investigation—a spiral.

We see that emblematic glyph within the very first moments of the movie (and Bernard Herrmann's cyclical music suggests it, as well), but it shows up throughout the movie in many forms. Here are some of them:

Madeleine's hair ends in a spiral...

...inspired as it is by the dead Carlotta Valdez's portrait.

The embrace of Scottie and Madeleine suggests a spiral

And, of course, Hitchcock's "vertigo" shot in the steeple is a spiral.

What is a spiral? A spinning form, its spinnakers flowing out from implied centrifugal force, but at its center...is nothing. A void...a negative space usually placed by Hitchcock near the center of the screen, unavoidable to the eye. And as the love between Scottie and Madeleine deepens, their embraces take on a spiral of their own, Hitchcock placing them in the center of the screen, linking the vertiginous "falling" and the lovers' dance.

(This is your last chance to leave before a major spoiler)

It all comes to naught, though.  Madeleine breaks their embrace and, compelled, runs up a Mission tower, which Scottie, in his acrophobia, cannot climb. He watches, horrified, as his love plunges to her death—a reflection of his own horror made real. He could not stop it, and his life consists of a void. He's walking down the avenues of grief and depression, at the corners of lust and need, and so much of his self-worth is wrapped up in it, the strong man he wants to be, the weakling he despairs over. As Carlotta haunted Madeleine, her death haunts him. 

Scottie's nightmares after the death of Madeleine are of such voids...that he could fall into.

He is plunged into a crippling depression, institutionalized, broken. We can "gussy" it up with hearts and flowers, but Love is chemistry, not the man/woman variety (and its variations), but specifically, brain chemistry.  Anyone who's had depression or other mental schism, like impulse control or attention deficit disorder, knows that it boils down to chemicals—something's deficient in the attic, some missing ingredient that needs to be augmented. Our brains are sparking stews of meat and chemicals, serotonin, hormones, pheremones, endorphins, testosterones and oxytocins. Love lights them up, decreasing and increasing with attraction, pursuit and mating.

So, then, is Love a mental illness? Like Scottie's fear? His depression? His vertigo? Is his fear of falling tied to his fear of falling...in love?

Released from the sanitarium, Scottie sees a woman one day, Judy Barton (played, as with Madeleine, by Kim Novak). He is compelled to pursue her, seeking his lost love. But, what he does not know, what Judy never wants him to know, is that Judy was Madeleine, duped by Gavin Elster as an accomplice to murder his real wife. Her love for Scottie is real, so, against her better judgement, she allows Scottie to woo her, to re-make her—once again (just as Elster had)—in the image of Madeleine, the clothes, the hair, the make-up (just as Hitchcock cast his actresses and made them coiffed blondes in tight grey suits). Only when the transformation is complete, and Scottie and Judy embrace, does the camera begin to spin around them, creating its own spiral, this time the background changing between the hotel room where the embrace takes place and the site—a horse-barn—where the earlier love-scene happened. For Scottie the illusion is complete. He has found his lost love.

Or, has he? The fascinating thing about Vertigo to me, aside from the association of Love to mental illness—is that Scottie's love is very real, but attached to, essentially, nothing. Judy was Madeleine—a role she played for Gavin Elster. Madeleine, vulnerable, suicidal, in need of rescuing, never existed. Scottie is in love with an illusion, a figment, a zephyr. He can re-capture—cruelly to Judy—the love. But, Judy can never completely be Madeleine to him (despite that she actually is). He is in love with an idea, a dream of perfection, that actually never existed—a ghost.

This is why I love Vertigo—it is a love story that questions the very nature of what love is, rather than just accepts it. If you can love an illusion...what is this thing called love?

Whatever it is, Fate steps in. Scottie is forced, and forces Judy, to relive the fateful steps up the Mission steeple, a move that cures him of his vertigo. But does it cure his love, as well? Scottie becomes truly unhinged in this scene, cruelly forcing Judy up the stairs and it is the apex of Stewart's acting career, challenging the beloved image of the "aw shucks" mid-westerner that marked so much of his interesting work in the 1950's. At the end, we, and Scottie have come full-circle. He is left on the edge, vertigo cured, but the situation, like his hanging from the gutter at the beginning of the film, is editorially unresolved. He is left, his arms, like his image in the falling silhouette in his nightmare, slightly apart from his body, not reaching per se, but only slightly outstretched.

And empty.

What is this "thing" called love? Is it part and parcel of the stew that makes up Scottie's mind, the confluent forces of worth and doubt, hope and despair, pleasure and pain, lust and heart-ache? Is it part of the depression he feels, or the cause? What is love, really?

We don't know. We cannot know. But the question is raised. And, like the character of Scottie, we are left—every one of us—on the brink.

Again. And again.