Nicholas Meyer
L'uomo venuto dall'impossibile

"The Man from the Impossible", by Nicholas Meyer

First of all, this film is notable for the title of the Italian version: "The Man from the Impossible".

Original title: "Time After Time".

This alone is enough to understand that we are talking about a film that deserves attention.

Another commendable detail is how the screenplay hardly bothers to provide even a remotely logical explanation for what happens. The film tells of H.G. Wells, the real-life English writer, author among others of "The Time Machine", which the film is freely inspired by.

Wells, during a dinner with friends in late 19th-century London, announces that he has invented a machine that allows him to travel through time. However, among the guests is Jack the Ripper who, discovered by the police, uses it to flee to San Francisco in 1979. Wells follows him, intent on stopping him at all costs.

The special effects are spectacular, particularly the scene where Wells travels to the future. In a whirlwind of psychedelic images, the main events of the 20th century are summarized through the voices of radio and television commentators, up to 1979, of course.

The paradoxes that this film stages are spectacular, without the slightest regard for the evident contradictions within the plot; one simply has to avoid asking questions and believe, as one should for any good science fiction story.

Malcolm MacDowell's performance is spectacular, the Alex from A Clockwork Orange, to be clear, who manages to be a perfect late 19th-century English lord, lost in a confusing and glittering America of the late '70s.

A film that mixes history with science fiction, mystery with the experimentation typical of those years, capable of delivering a strong critique of today's society, where even Jack the Ripper is embarrassed by so much gratuitous violence.