A deserved classic, one that looks even better over the years. The time machine is a marvellous Victorian invention, backed up by imaginative special effects and photography. A captivating feeling of melancholy and loss permeates the film, giving it unexpected power (the sequence in 1966 with the world on the verge of World War Three is particularly potent).
Support performances are fine (Yvette Mimieux is lovely), with intelligent directing and scripting – though it does have to deal a few logic problems faced by most time travel films. (For instance, one can not help but wonder what sort of world Rod Taylor’s character goes off to join at the end of the film - now that he has taken away the Eloi’s food supply and re-introduced them to violence!)
A great deal of the success of the film comes from Rod Taylor’s performance: he is believable both as a man of thought and a man of action – as Rod himself put it, a combination of “highly intellectual” and “ballsiness”, someone capable of inventing a time machine, and beating up Morlocks. He acts with energy, sensitivity and complete conviction, being particularly strong in his scenes with Mimieux and Alan Young.
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