We stood at a German car boot sale today. It's one of many we've done over the past two years to find new homes for my Wife's late parents' countless possessions.
One item which sold was a nice deck chair. As I dragged it into a storage area next to the car the two ruts it made reminded me entirely of the ruts made by the Time Machine in the 1960's film adaptation of HG Wells' short story.
The Time Machine is one of my favourite films from back then and the scene where the time traveller sits in his machine and watches his immediate vicinity change over millennia is my favourite in the film.
The changing fashions of the shop window mannequin is one of those genius devices that make it so memorable, until of course there is no mannequin and then no shop.
Here's a mannequin I saw myself just this week.
I've always personally Interpreted the Morlocks and Eloi as the haves and the have nots, one keeping the other alive in order to literally consume them like cattle. The time traveller's frustration at the Eloi's seeming passiveness is understandable and his rage towards the Morlocks perfectly natural.
It is during this scenario that the time machine is moved by the Morlocks, who drag it into one of their utility blocks if I recall. When the time traveller eventually returns to his Victorian home the position of his machine has changed as a result. It's another fabulous bit of film-making and continuity in this superb movie.
Do you like the Time Machine?
Woodsy.
A wonderful, thought provoking film. I especially enjoy the part where Rod Taylor is moving through the storage area of future artefacts and finds the spinning rings, which store recorded audio. At the time I thought it was a ridiculous idea, but given the pace of technological change, the idea doesn't seem at all strange now. In the story, the traveller actually journeys even farther into the future to a point where Earth is nearing its end and the only life on the planet is some wasted, amorphous thing that floats in an endless ocean as the sun bloats in preparation for its ultimate demise. Bill
ReplyDeleteProbably the most succesful film adaptation of any of HG Wells' works
ReplyDelete(you can fight me over Things to Come...)
Interesing that Wells saw the Eloi/Morlok dynamic as a possible final outcome of class warfare. The Morloks were the workers and the Eloi their effete masters.
Maybe the origin of the phrase
"Eat the Rich"!