SOMEWHERE IN TIME

"Come back to me," the old woman whispered to young playwrite, Richard Collier - that evening in May, 1972 as he was celebrating the successful opening of his new play - then handed him a pocket watch and disappeared.

With those haunting words began the movie "Somewhere In Time"(based on the novel "Bid Time Return"by Richard Matheson); a love story so moving it has captured the hearts and imaginations of all who have seen it, enhanced by the loveliest of musical scores and the brilliant acting of the lovers by the incredible, indomitable Christopher Reeve and the beautiful Jane Seymour.

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"Somewhere In Time" musical score arranged and orchestrated by Gene Garretson.

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This lovely music plays for seven minutes.

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Eight years have passed since the old woman said those words to Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) and handed him the pocket watch, and now a successful Chicago playwrite he succumbs to writers block on his new play and drives to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan.    There, he wanders into the hotel's "Hall of History" and becomes enthralled by an untitled picture of a young woman who, an elderly hotel employee named Arthur (Bill Erwin) tells him, is Elise McKenna, an actress who starred in a play at the Grand Hotel in 1912.

Richard's fascination with the woman in the picture finds him researching her life and when he locates the former housekeeper of Elise and shows her the watch, the woman tells him that the watch was Elise's most valued possession and it disappeared the night she died.    The housekeeper also shows him some of Elise's possessions that had been left with her and amongst them he discovers a book on time travel that was written by his old philosophy professor.    When he returns home and confronts the elderly professor about the book, the old man tells him a few things about recreating the past and disassociating himself from the present.

Obsessed now with the idea, Richard returns to the Grand Hotel wearing an early 1900's brown suit he has found and bought and with some old coins of that era in his pocket, and without success attempts to will himself into the past.   When that doesn't work, he has Arthur, the hotel employee who told him about Elise, search for old guest registers. He finds an entry showing that a Richard Collier of Chicago, Illinois registered as a guest on June 27, 1912, then returns to his room and lies down on the bed and tries again.

This time he is successful, and finds himself transported back to the Grand Hotel of 1912.   As he wanders curiously around the 1912 era hotel lobby he comes across a young lad, named Arthur, playing with a ball, and smiles as he continues on into the dining room/ballroom where he sees Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour) dining with friends and asks her for a dance.   She agrees and while they are dancing she looks up at him poignantly and asks, "Is it you?"

Elise's stage manager, W. H. Robinson (Chistopher Plummer) is disturbed by Richard's presence and threatens to have him put out of the hotel.   But Richard, undaunted, eventually convinces Elise to spend the afternoon with him.   But before he meets her he has one thing he knows he must do.  He returns to the hotel registry desk and registers, but when the desk clerk hands him a key to room 420, Richard panics, insisting he should have the key to room 416 - the room he had signed for in the old guest register in 1912 - and the desk clerk corrects his error and hands him the right key.

Richard and Elise spend the afternoon together, walking around Mackinac Island, and falling in love.   She tells Richard her question, "Is it you?" on the dance floor was prompted by a warning her manager, Robinson, had given her that she would meet a man who would change her life.   And when she admires Richard's pocket watch, asking where it came from, he says only that, "It was given to me."

That evening, as Richard sits in the audience watching Elise's performance of her play, she suddenly changes her lines to give her "Man of my dreams" speech, ending with an "I love you" directed at Richard.   At intermission, she poses for the picture that hangs in the Hall of History.  The furious Robinson, determined to break up what was happening between Richard and Elise, has Richard abducted and badly beaten and when Richard finally regains consciousness much later, he learns that Elise and the stage company have checked out of the hotel.

Depressed at his loss, he sits forlornly on the hotel's verandah, wondering what to do, and at that moment Elise appears in the background and begins walking slowly towards him.   Richard takes Elise in his arms and they kiss passionately before returning to the hotel room for the incredibly romantic lace curtain love scene.

Later, while dining in the room, they begin making plans for their future life together.   Elise offers to buy Richard a new suit that is not so outdated, but Richard insists on showing off the features of the one he is wearing.  While demonstrating the pockets, he pulls out a 1979 penny and in horror feels himself beginning to fade away as he helplessly hears Elise crying out for him.

Richard awakens in the present, and, despondent, he walks along the beach, retracing his steps with Elise.   Sure he has lost her, he returns to his room, refusing to eat and sitting at the window day after day just staring until he falls into a coma-like state.   It is Arthur who eventually discovers Richard in this state and he calls for a doctor.

While the doctor is attempting to revive Richard, a light starts coming through the window and Elise appears walking towards the bed.   As the doctor continues trying to revive Richard's body, Richard's spirit rises out of it and he walks over to Elise and takes her hand then together they walk away to "Somewhere In Time," together now for eternity.