Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc
Starring: Christopher Plummer, Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Teresa Wright
Revealing mistake: When Richard first wakes up after travelling through time, he's supposed to be lying on a couch. Yet there is a wall behind him. It's blatantly obvious that it's the same shot from the modern bedroom, and all they did was change the lighting. (00:33:45)
Factual error: In scenes that take place in 1912 on the porch of the hotel you can sometimes see American flags in the background. The flags in the movie have 50 stars. The 50 star flag wasn't adopted until after 1959. (01:25:15)
Richard Collier: Please, don't leave. You have no idea how far I've come to be with you.
Trivia: When Richard Collier leaves the men's room, bloodied from his first encounter with a straight razor, the bearded man who stares at him in the hall and declares, "Astonishing!" is screenwriter Richard Matheson in a cameo role. His screen credit at the end reads "Astonished Man." (01:01:55)
Question: Before Old Arthur leaves the room, why did he get the feeling that him and Richard met before?
Answer: He already did, when the elder Elise approached him and said, "Come back to me." When he visited her home and listened to the music box and replied. "That's my favorite song." He found his name in the old hotel register in the storage room. At the end of the movie, when he returned to the future, Elise was holding his pocket watch, which she returned to him when she was old. All that concludes he did time travel, he just hadn't done it yet.
Thanks. Time travel movies sure are confusing.
Answer: Because they had met before. When Richard went back in time to 1912, Arthur was a five-year-old boy. Old Arthur remembers, or at least recognizes, Richard from that time.
raywest ★
Except that Richard hadn't travelled into the past yet.
Like all time-travel fiction, if he will, then he already did. The portrait he saw in the gallery of Jane Seymour is another example: He brought the smile to her face and IIRC, she changed her pose upon seeing him.
kayelbe
Exactly right. Time-travel films rarely make sense plot-wise. They employ a "suspension of disbelief" where the audience just accepts the premise so the story can be told, regardless of whether or not everything makes sense. As I recall, Jane Seymour's "old character" told Richard to "come back to her," meaning she wanted him to go back in time to when she was young.
raywest ★
Time Travel movies and shows do this sort of thing often. This movie actually keeps to the premise of time travel pretty well.