Lots of fun...Even if the trip to H. G. Wells' future ends in disappointment, getting there is half the fun.

— 1960 review

     Though the two of them are often lumped together into the same pot, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne were two very different kinds of writers. Verne was the father of what has since been called “hard” science fiction. He studied existing trends in science and exploration and then imagined what those same trends might produce in fifty or one hundred year’s time. His main interest, in other words, was in the technology itself. H.G. Wells, on the other hand, lived in a much larger world of ideas. Wells wanted to know what it all meant—where humanity was headed, and how men ought to live together and be governed if the new, scientific worldview should turn out to be true. Jules Verne’s politics were revolutionary, to be sure, but only in the sturdy Napoleonic sense of that term, a sense already old-fashioned by his day. Wells (who came from a lower-class, Baptist background) was on fire with a new religion: converted to atheism and communism and scientific technocracy, and zealous to spread this newfound faith by means of his writings. His 1895 novel The Time Machine is the perfect example, and the change it underwent before reaching the screen (far more sweeping than had ever been considered necessary for Verne) puts the difference between the two writers into sharp relief.

Significantly, it took until 1960 for Wells’ books to pass into the Fireside category to begin with. All previous H.G. Wells movies (from Island of Lost Souls and The Invisible Man, to War of the Worlds and The Man Who Could Work Miracles) had been filmed straight, in a contemporary setting, like any other modern novel. This shows that Wells was taken more seriously, and taken seriously much longer, than Verne was—and that Wells’ books were still cutting-edge, even a bit threatening, late into the 20th century. It was George Pal, apparently, who first conceived of giving a Wells novel the nostalgic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea treatment. Yet in order to do so, he had to remove practically all of the things that Wells had been most serious about. Basically, The Time Machine became a Fireside science fiction movie by being turned into a Jules Verne movie first. And it’s tremendously enjoyable on that level, don’t get me wrong. But it isn’t very much like what Wells wrote.

Does this really matter? Not to most of us, perhaps. Most of us are neither communists, nor atheists, nor scientific technocrats; and even Wells himself might wish to revise his hundred-and-eight year old book of prophecy were he still with us today. One of The Time Machine’s most memorable imaginings, for instance, is its vision of a future humanity divided up into two distinct species—the gentle, flaccid Eloi, sated on luxury, and the bestial Morlocks, lurking below the surface and keeping the great machines running. This image, of course, was extrapolated from the same heartless English capitalism that Dickens had protested about not too many years before. It was a vision of laissez faire run wild for 800,000 years, until it finally transforms the old metaphor of an “upper” and a “lower” class into an literal biological reality. Today however (and largely due to people like Wells himself) laissez faire is just as extinct as communism. The two sides fought themselves into a Mexican stand-off over the course of the 20th century and the results of that drawn battle created (as many of us see) a new, third thing with some the worst qualities of both parents. Basically, the socialist ameliorations that were gradually introduced into the system by Wells’ less radical compadres have rendered capitalism stable and permanent—a result Wells himself would have deplored. Still, H.G. Wells really did become his own Time Traveler; he got a frightening vision of tomorrow…and then (for better or worse) prevented it from happening. Now, I personally think this true-life scenario is far more interesting than anything in George Pal’s movie. But I guess I do agree that it would have been a difficult thing to turn into a widescreen adventure movie.

It really is curious, though, that Wells’ moral is so easily detachable from Wells’ fable; usually there’s not much left of an analogy if you remove the whole darn point right at the get-go. In this respect, The Time Machine seems a lot like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver’s political message has been out of date for two and a half centuries, and yet people still seem to enjoy somehow the fantastic (but now empty) framework upon which it was hung. It almost looks as if these writers did their job as storytellers a bit too well; their analogies can be taken more seriously as stories than was really intended; more seriously, perhaps, than an analogy ought to be taken. And this suggests that these two English polemicists might have created, in spite of themselves, something much more important than any mere political analogy—they seem to have created two permanent and mysteriously stirring myths. And this, come to think of it, is where Pal’s film turns out to have some depth after all.

I still say that the actual future we reach, the Eloi and the Morlocks and all that, turns out to be a bit of a let down. Once the Time Traveler has reached his destination, rescued Weena, and given the Talking Books a spin, all that remains for him to do is just find the monsters and dutifully set about destroying them. But the first half of the film—ah, this is the stuff that dreams are made of! The Victorian set-up is more flavorful and convincing than any we’ve seen since Journey to the Center of the Earth. And some of Journey’s other important lessons were learned as well; Mrs. Watchett, the Filbys (father and son), and even the stuffy gentlemen at the dinner table, are all delightfully real and vivid characters. But the best parts of the film, by far, are the scenes depicting the workings of the Time Machine itself. A contemporary review describes its pitch-perfect appearance: “It’s a delightful gadget with a red velvet seat, a crystal control knob and the technical sophistication of an Egyptian solar boat.” Not only are the special effects excellent, but we’re given such a thorough tour of the device that we almost feel we could drive it ourselves…which is a truly wonderful sensation. So vibrant is this sense of felt-reality that it gets us pondering all the same things a real Time Traveler might: destiny, human free will, and the ultimate meaning of it all. In this sense, the film actually bests the book. Wells is so intent on getting to his sociological point that he sometimes forgets to stop and smell the biologically advanced and hitherto unknown flowers.

Granted this film’s decidedly non-political intentions, I think it succeeds startlingly well in every single place where it succeeds at all. Screenwriter David Duncan (whose other credits include The Black Scorpion and Fantastic Voyage) mainstreams the story very effectively, and composer Russell Garcia (an incredibly talented man, with only this and one other Pal film to his credit) picks the whole production up by the scruff of the neck and carries it along to heights it must only have suggested without him. The picture was nominated for the Hugo Award as Best Dramatic Presentation and actually received a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Special Effects.

From here on out, H. G. Wells finds himself forever associated in the public mind with Jules Verne and sees most films based on his work being billed as quaint period pieces. And this really is a bit of a shame. Even though I agree with hardly any of what he wrote, Wells’ heart was definitely in the right place—filled with deep conviction and determined to use his flair for mythic fantasy as a way to explore the meaning of our lives.