The Time Machine (1960)

Directed by: George Pal | 97 minutes | adventure, science fiction | Actors: Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Alan Young, Sebastian Cabot, Tom Helmore, Whit Bissel, Doris Lloyd

This 1960 film is based on the book The Time Machine by Herbert George Wells. The time traveler’s name is George, but his last name is not mentioned in the film. That the time traveler probably represents HG Wells himself is clear from the fact that the control panel of the time machine says Manufactured by HG Wells. The film is reminiscent of a filmed comic strip and deviates in many parts from Wells’ book.

In addition to the deviations in the film from the book, there are illogical things, sloppiness and ambiguities in the film. The cars in the street that are being flooded by lava are clearly toy cars. The speed of the events that the time traveler watches from his time machine is not constant: flowers open in seconds, but the people in the street are only accelerated two to three times. Other events also raise questions. George’s friend’s son turns out to have a superhuman memory when he recalls a brief encounter with George 49 years earlier. Incomprehensibly, the Eloi are hypnotized by a siren from the Morlocks. Nor are they bothered by the siren’s volume, although on several occasions George can barely move because of its crushing sound. The collapse of only a few underground passages containing several Morlocks’ houses is presented as a total victory of the Eloi over Morlock’s world domination. The logic and/or clarity is also hard to find in various other events.

Despite the significant shortcomings in the story, the film is atmospheric, partly due to the special effects with which the film won an Oscar. These effects with regard to the accelerated outside world in George’s own time in his immediate environment are cleverly depicted. We also see the changes in the vast landscape in the future taking place at lightning speed in a fascinating way. The time machine itself is a fascinating device, with puzzling tubes and buttons. The immateriality of the time traveler and his machine during time travel is strikingly portrayed. The time machine is buried under lava, but has just been turned on by George so that he can escape the glowing lava flow himself. As a result, the time machine with the time traveler is encapsulated by the petrified lava on its time travel and we see the time traveler in the interior of the cooled mountain of lava cold while he has to wait thousands of years before the rock crumbles around him. The completely changed world he then finds himself in and the strange, new things in it arouse curiosity, as well as the initial total indifference of the Eloi and their unclear relationship with the Morlocks.

The Eloi and the Morlocks are, in addition to some individual characters, the two groups around which the story takes place. It is amusing how the Eloi and the Morlocks are depicted as good and evil. Based on their appearance alone, it is immediately obvious to the viewer which group the sympathy should go out to. The Morlocks have evolved into hulking curvy green-colored behemoths with long white hair, large protruding teeth, and flat noses and eyes that literally blink on and off. They do not use human intelligible language as a means of communication, but growling sounds. The fact that they also fatten and devour the Eloi and whip them lustily also contributes to their being regarded only with distaste.

Unlike the Morlocks, the Eloi have changed remarkably little in evolutionary terms. They look like normal people, except that they are a lot shorter than George in height and all have blond hair. They behave like indifferent herd animals that cannot or hardly think for themselves and allow themselves to be led defenseless and apathetic by the Morlocks to the literal slaughter. The explanation is given that they have lost all knowledge and development that mankind had acquired up to and including the twentieth century (‘the human race reduced to living vegetables’). Finally, when some Eloi aid George in the decisive battle against the Morlocks, it is presented as proof that the Eloi have undergone a change of mentality that will enable them to conquer these Dark Ages.

Rod Taylor plays George, the hero who saves the Eloi from the Morlocks. Mainly because of his investigative nineteenth century mind and willingness to fight the Morlocks, the Morlocks are defeated. Though initially disappointed by the Eloi as an idealist, he later returns to them to help them build a better world.

The stupid blonde cliché is carried out in a very extreme way by the Eloi girl Weena (Yvette Mimieux). Her function is to be beautiful and stupid, and to serve as a reason for George to act against the Morlocks when she is captured by them.

Alan Young plays a double role, playing both George’s friend David Filby and his son James Filby. As James Filby, he tells George about the death of his father David and about the umpteenth war going on. As David Filby, he gives George anxious advice to forget his obsession for a better time and destroy the time machine. Furthermore, David’s role at the end of the film is to explain to both George’s housekeeper and the viewer that George has returned to the Eloi.

The film is set in London, at the end of the nineteenth century, for a few minutes in different years of the twentieth century and in the year 802,701. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, we only see a single street and tall buildings only appear in the background. There are no specific points of recognition, so that the story could in principle have been set in any city or village. In the future, everything that reminds of the past has disappeared and London has turned into a hilly landscape with rivers, forests, lawns and ruins of buildings.

Finally, the following is interesting: George tells his friend David Filby in 1899 that he was told by his son James Filby in 1917 that David would die in 1916 in the First World War. If David knows in 1899 that he himself will be killed in 1916, it is only logical that he tries to prevent this. However, David’s reaction to his future deaths in the war is not portrayed. Nor do we find out what he does with the knowledge he has acquired about his own future death. But it would be possible that he, for example, emigrates with his son James and thus changes the future by not dying. Then his son James cannot meet George afterwards and tell him that his father David was killed and then George cannot pass this on to David, but George has already had this conversation with son James and then passed on the information to David while David was just the future has changed and thus has not died, and so a possible disruption of the logical connection between cause and effect also comes up in this time travel film.

A clearly dated film with ambiguities and contradictions. Suitable as a children’s film, for the nostalgic elderly among us, and for those who want to see an atmospheric science-fiction film from the old box without having to place high expectations on the story.