The Time Machine (1960)

Excellent but underrated film

Don't listen to the negative reviews

best movie i've ever seen.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is one of my favorite movies. It is much better than all the next productions, though the effects look a bit funny compared to today's multi-million blockbusters. But the idea, the idea of the film is much more influential than today's frivolous comics. A grim future ... maybe already present!

(Flash Review) This is an amusing time travel movie with a plot that is intriguing, has a message, keeps changing and getting more creative as the story goes. The movie starts in the 1800's and goes all the way to something like 200,000 AD!!! As the time traveling inventor makes stops throughout time he sees how mankind changes. When he stops at year 200,000 AD, he notices humans have stopped caring about learning and advancing the species. He finds this troubling and later learns that another type of foreign being has had a profound influence over mankind. What is happening? Will he or should he alter the future and will he be able or want to make it back to his original time? This is an entertaining 60's Sci-Fi movie with amusing sets and effects. It also has subtext around society and the dangers of future technology and not learning from past as well as failing to advance mankind.

It must be said that one has to be ambitious to tackle a literary giant like H.G. Wells. This master has crafted works that persist as classics more than 50 years after his death. Never one to shy away from heavy themes, H.G. Wells' work is one that would unnerve me to explore on film. Nonetheless, The Time Machine (1960) directed by George Pal brings Well's words to life on screen. Tackling such heavies as class, society, and modernization, The Time Machine fails to disappoint in either format.The Time Machine starts out as another backwards tale, which I am quite partial to. We meet a group of friends in a dining hall when a disheveled scientist George (Rod Taylor) arrives with unkempt hair and tattered clothes. He is visibly shaken at first, and then begins to explain to his friends about his unique travels. Having met his friend Filby's (Alan Young) son on his travels, he is especially interested in telling him his stories. George didn't just take any trip, he traveled through time. As Filby and George previously discussed, George has a preoccupation with time. He believes he has been born to the wrong time, and because of this feeling, devotes his scientific research to trying to manipulate time. George hopes to discover a utopia in the future in which minds are celebrated and innovation encouraged. On the eve of the 20th century, his time machine finally works and George sets out, cautiously, to explore the future he will never know. After gingerly going hours then weeks in the future, George has made up his mind to travel hundreds of years. When he finally lands, many thousands of years into the future, George is greeted with a civilization of sheep, all following one another with no knowledge of how their government works or if they even have one. George is optimistic to find that war and famine are worries of the past, but disheartened when he is taken to the "library" of the civilization to see all the books being stored there crumbling to dust. George is devastated to learn that the utopia he was so sure to find is actually a dystopia. These people are called Eloi, and at first assumption look as though they lead care-free lives, once the city becomes dark however, we can see that is far from the truth. The Eloi actually live in constant fear of the Morlocks, a group that provides the Eloi with clothes and nourishment, as well as periodic population control. Blindly following the Morlocks' command, George is committed to showing the eloi that they needn't be under the Morlock's control, even if that means rescuing them himself.The Time Machine has been hailed for its use of special effects, which were way ahead of their time. It only makes sense that a film about traversing time would have effects that also superseded it. As George firsts experiments with his machine and is dancing through the hours and the days, we see the flowers in his garden rapidly grow and die again. Seeing the flowers blooming and retracting was a nice special effects tool for the audience to witness. We also see in George's travels, the earth succumbing to a fierce magma. I do not know how this magma was created, but its thickness and texture was incredibly realistic. When we see George pitted against the Morlocks we see that they all have beaming eyes. This effect was also interesting considering it was 1960. These effects today would all be easy to create, but considering this film was made almost 60 years ago, they were definitely ahead of their time.H.G. Wells was noted for his exploration of themes that concern the human condition. This film definitely fits into that category. Civilization is greatly explored, as George is certain that the future will only produce advancements for society. When he sees that the future society has devolved to such a great extent, he learns that advancement does not always produce a positive outcome. Modernization is also explored as we learn with George that production means are irrelevant if the human mind stops growing. Finally, the most blatant issue explored in The Time Machine is class. We are introduced to two classes, producers and consumers. The consumers are subservient and completely dependent upon the producers. The producers are shown to be ugly, nonhuman like creatures, while the consumers are beautiful, yet the exact same as one another. One can draw the conclusion that, as we see the producers coming up from underground in which they live that the production of society is the grunt work done only to preserve itself. Even though the Morlocks are hideous and primitive, the Eloi live in constant fear of them, yet completely dependent upon them for everything with which to sustain life. They also live in blissful ignorance about what they are missing out on, unrestricted life. Clearly, Wells reserves no love for the producers; even classifying them as cannibalistic. This film does wonders to show the dangers of submitting to a ruling class of producers and warns one to always maintain individuality.I quite enjoyed The Time Machine, and would recommend this version to anyone who enjoys any of H.G. Well's works. I also would recommend this film to fans of the sci-fi genre. It is interesting to see the early workings of such a prolific genre, and to see the special effects achieved by a film of this nature. Something about this film felt very nostalgic and comfortable for me. I am not sure why I felt a kinship to this film, as I have never before seen a film like it. For that reason alone, I would also recommend this movie as it exists as a cautionary tale of maintaining individuality.

It's not unfair to say that H.G. Wells, who wrote the short novel on which this movie is based, was ahead of his time. Writing in 1895, the concept of time travel would probably have been unusual to say the least to readers of the era. Fast forward 65 years to director George Pal's movie version of the story. In its own way, this is also ahead of its time. Although science fiction was well established by 1960, I can't recall too much having been done with the concept of time travel at this point. So, in a sense, Pal was also a bit of a pioneer, putting together a very convincing movie version of the novel, with pretty good (for the time) special effects (which won an Oscar) and enough suspense to keep the viewer interested.The movie opens on January 5, 1900 - just a few days after the turn of the century. Inventor George Wells has invited several of his friends to dinner, but he's mysteriously late, and when he does finally show up his dishevelled appearance shocks his friends. Wells then recounts his wild tale of time travel - beginning with a dinner party a few days before, on December 31, 1899, with these same friends, to whom he revealed the invention of his time machine, and who mocked him in return. After they leave, Wells decides to test the machine, eventually travelling many thousands of years into the future, where he discovers that humanity seems to have been divided into two groups - the mysteriously young Eloi, who live on the earth's surface and seem to have an idyllic existence, enjoying plenty of food and apparently doing little if any work, and the monstrous Morlocks, who retreated underground. What George finally discovers about the relationship between the two groups shocks him.It's all well done - including the performance of Rod Taylor as inventor George. What really struck me was the irony involved in the story. George is in despair over the fate of humanity. In his own time, England is involved in the Boer War. Traveling ahead a few years in time, he discovers England enmeshed in World War I; traveling ahead a few more years he finds England in the midst of World War II. Is there to be no relief from war? Setting his sights on the far distant future, George finally discovers what seems to be a world at peace - but his contribution is to lead the Eloi in a violent revolt against the Morlocks. A justifiable revolt in the circumstances, but still ... not what you would have expected from him. And, in the end, after he returns to his own time and fails to convince his friends of what he's accomplished, George heads back to the future - bringing with him three (unnamed) books. Obviously he felt the need to share some of his own time's knowledge and learning with the Eloi - which, given his disdain for his own time, is another piece of irony.It's quite well done - including, if I may say, the inclusion of the very lovely Yvette Mimieux as George's Eloi friend (love interest?) Weena, as well as supporting (if limited) performances from Alan Young, Sebastian Cabot, Tom Helmore and Whit Bissell as George's friends and dinner guests. (7/10)