EDITOR’S NOTE: Somewhere In Time was on USA Up All Night on August 12, 1994.
Sometimes, a film is rejected by the critics upon arrival, only to be lovingly rescued by audiences over the decades. Somewhere in Time is the gold standard of this cult classic trajectory, a sweeping, unabashedly earnest romantic fantasy that defies the cynicism of its time.
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc and written by Richard Matheson (adapting his novel Bid Time Return), the film tells the story of Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve), a playwright haunted by the image of a beautiful young woman in a vintage photograph.
Driven by an inexplicable obsession with her, Richard uses self-hypnosis to travel back from 1980 to 1912. Once you get past this conceit, you can determine whether or not you love what follows.
Richard arrives at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, seeking the woman in the photo: Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), a celebrated stage actress. Her life is tightly controlled by her overbearing manager, William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer). What follows is a tragic, transcendent romance that hinges on the ragility of time itself.
While contemporary critics in 1980 often dismissed the film as a “superficial tear-jerker,” such a label ignores the film’s singular atmosphere. It succeeds because it refuses to be ironic. It is entirely committed to its own high-concept premise.
Perhaps the film’s greatest asset is the genuine connection between Reeve and Seymour. This was rooted in reality, as the two actors reportedly fell in love during the production. Plus, John Barry’s score is arguably one of the most romantic in film history. By weaving in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s 18th Variation of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the music does much of the emotional heavy lifting. It acts as a character in its own right, grounding the ethereal concept of time travel in a deep, melancholic ache.
Though sabotaged by an actors’ strike and a lack of marketing support from Universal, which was focused on The Blues Brothers, the film found life through cable airings. That’s where I first saw it as a kid, when it aired on HBO. Even in 2026, the International Network of Somewhere In Time Enthusiasts (I.N.S.I.T.E.) continues to meet annually at the Grand Hotel.
