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)
Somewhere In Time (1980)
Directed by: Jeannot Szwarc
Starring: Christopher Plummer, Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Teresa Wright
Factual error: In 1912, Richard Collier gives young Arthur his ball, and above their heads, you can see the 1980 fire sprinklers in the ceiling. (00:40:40)
Continuity mistake: When Reeves signs the guest register at the hotel in 1912, his signature is different from the one that he saw in the register that he found in the attic.
Trivia: During filming, director Jeannot Szwarc had communication problems with both Christopher Reeve and Christopher Plummer. Every time he would say Chris, both Reeves and Plummer would respond. To put an end to it, he started addressing Christopher Plummer as "Mr. Plummer" and Christopher Reeve as "Bigfoot."
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)
Richard Collier: Please, don't leave. You have no idea how far I've come to be with you.
Richard Collier: I owe you an apology. I understand you now. You have nothing but the best motives in mind for her, but so do I.
Older Elise: Come back to me.
Question: When Richard accidentally pulls a coin out of his coat pocket, he sees that it's a penny and he is sent back to his own time. After being weakened upon his trip back to the future, why, after what was likely several days to get his full strength back, wasn't he able to return to the past? His mentor told him returning to his own time would leave him weakened but, given enough time to get it back, he could have gone back to the past again.
Question: Before Old Arthur leaves the room, why did he get the feeling that him and Richard met before?
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.
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.
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.
Time Travel movies and shows do this sort of thing often. This movie actually keeps to the premise of time travel pretty well.
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.
Question: Is there a scene where a young boy watching the filming is seen? I heard this years ago and the clip was shown.
Answer: There are several things like this throughout the movie. It's a rather busy location.
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Answer: He was no longer able to put everything out of his mind, which was a requirement to successfully time-travel. He was distraught and unable to focus enough mentally. He stopped eating, and as time went on he became weaker and weaker.