Somewhere in Time

A young playwright is handed a watch by an elderly woman who explains nothing. Years later, in a hotel, he becomes fixed on a photograph from 1912 and looks for a way back to it. The film solves time travel by suggestion rather than machinery: the man simply talks himself into the year. That choice pulls the story out of science fiction and hands it entirely to melodrama, which is both why it is loved and why it is dismissed. It drew little attention on release and found its audience through television repeats; the Michigan hotel still hosts gatherings of its admirers. Who it's for: those who can take unguarded romance. Who it's not for: viewers who want the rules of time travel to hold together; the film is not interested in them.