Victorian Time Travel: H G Wells vs. Jack the Ripper

So on New Year’s Day, I traveled back in time.

To be accurate, I watched the 1979 movie “Time after Time,” starring Malcolm MacDowell, David Warner and Mary Steenburgen. It was mind-blowing, being flung 37 years into the past, all the way back to the late 70s.

Well, back to the late 1800s as well. In the movie, the late Victorian era is portrayed as gritty and dangerous, the gaslit alleyways hiding the specter of hideous death in the form of disease, deprivation, and Jack the Ripper.

H.G. Wells is portrayed not as a fantastic storyteller bur as an actual Victorian inventor who built a working time machine. When his friend Dr. John Stevenson is unmasked as the Ripper, Stevenson steals the machine and travels forward into time to 1979 San Francisco, where the Time Machine is on display in a museum.

Here’s the trailer:

Fortunately, the Time Machine will return to its proper time unless the driver has a key to hold it in the alternate time. This will allow the nerdy and idealistic H.G. Wells to pursue Jack the Ripper into the future, in order to bring him back to face justice.

But in 1979, the marvelously evil Ripper takes one look at the horrors of modern life and knows that he’s where he belongs. In the best lines in the movie, he declares, “I belong here completely and utterly. I’m home…The world has caught up with me and surpassed me. Ninety years ago I was a freak. Today I’m an amateur.”

Watching this movie really made me think about how the Victorians must have felt about themselves: So modern, so fast-moving. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in less than a week! Talking instantly to someone miles away by telephone! Traveling from one end of Britain to another by train in a single day!

And then the two characters journey into the future and discover that it’s not the peaceful paradise that H.G. Wells had so confidently envisioned. The world was moving faster than ever but violence was everywhere, even in cartoons (cartoon violence was a big issue in the 70s, as I recall. Victorians would have sympathized with that, since they had a very sentimental view of childhood). War continued to plague humanity – as was demonstrated when the camera closed in on the forearm of a San Francisco jeweler, who bore the tattoo of a concentration camp survivor.

On the positive side, H.G. Wells meets Amy Robbins (actually Wells’ wife’s name), played by Mary Steenbergen. During the late 70s Women’s Liberation was in full swing. Women were experiencing a heady feeling of sexual freedom, thanks to new, more effective birth control methods. It was delightful to see thoroughly modern Amy putting the moves on Herbert the Victorian nerd.

In sum, the old adage rings true: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Here is an interesting commentary on the film from Alan Spencer: