Somewhere In Time

(1980)

"Is it you?"

The ultimate modern-day four-hankie chick-flick, "Somewhere In Time", starring Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer, and Teresa Wright (in a bit part) is an unabashedly sentimental, romantic, beautiful film that never fails to bring me to tears.

Reeve portrays Richard Collier, a young Chicago playwright, who, on the opening night of his first play, is approached by an elderly woman who pleads with him to "Come back to me" as she presses an antique watch into his hands. Intrigued, he starts to do some research and discovers that the woman was, in her youth, a beautiful and popular stage actress named Elise McKenna. He travels to a resort where she had performed, and becomes obsessed with a photographic portrait he sees on display there. (Next comes the really fantasy part) He decides he has to learn how he can travel back in time so that he may meet her, and by self-hypnosis, combined with other methods/props, they meet and fall in love. But trouble rears its ugly head in the form of Elise's overbearing and overprotective manager (Plummer).

Christopher Reeve is at his handsome prime here, and his performance is wonderfully Gary Cooperish-tall-awkward-naive-in love. Jane Seymour is at her most patrician, slyly feline best (her other best performance, IMO, has been in the TV remake of "East of Eden", which is actually a very fine film in its own right). Their performances, along with Christopher Plummer's, the beautiful soundtrack by John Barry, which is almost better than the film itself, and the costumes combine to make a great tearjerker along the lines of the old classics.

Official website: http://www.somewhereintime.tv/