Berkeley Square

Arne Andersen (aandersen@landmarkcollege.org) wrote on IMDB:

To my knowledge this was the first time-travel film ever made. Leslie Howard had made a hit in the play, both in London and in NYC, and was selected for the Fox film. It is nicely opened up from the play, although it is still a bit stagey.

The plot involves the fascination of a young American, who inherits a house in Berkeley Square. He becomes fascinated with his ancestors to the point of believing he can time travel if he wants to badly enough (SOMEWHERE IN TIME owes a great deal to this premise).

His ancestor of the same name visited the house from America on a certain date and he is able to change places with him on the anniversary date. He of course is at first quaint and then taken by his ancestors to be bizarre and finally, possessed by the devil - his ability to predict the future and other faux pas being the cause. Only his fiancée's sister is able to discern who he really is. They of course fall in love and in a powerful sequence reminiscent of Lloyd's montage in CAVALCADE the year earlier, she looks into his mind and sees the devastation of the centuries mankind has wrought in the interim between their two worlds. He can no longer remain in the past and she has no desire to return with him to the future.   [ show more ]

The play and film end tragically as, once returned to the future, our hero locks himself in the house, awaiting death, and visiting daily the 200 year old grave of the woman he loved.

The costumes are lavish and Lloyd does his usual fine job of direction. Howard earned an Academy Award nomination for his excellent performance. Other than the opening out of the action with exterior scenes and new dialogue, the only real difference is the character's interactions with notable figures of the time and his negative take on their characters, as well as the filth and bad manners of the eighteenth century - these observations are not part of the screenplay.

Extremely hard to find - rarely on television although the Fox channel is about the only place one could find it these days. Never available commercially on video, but private collector Mon Ayash (Forgotten Hollywood) has it on VHS for trade or sale.

Very worth seeking out for both romantics and those fascinated with time travel. [ show less ]

Grady E. Jensen (bushrod1@worldnet.att.net) wrote on IMDB:

"Berkeley Square" is similar in theme to Jack Finney's "Time and Again." A present day American is transported back to the home of his ancestors in London, during the American Revolution. He knows, of course, what will hap- pen and even falls in love with one of his female ancestors. An old film but a terrific one, with Leslie Howard and Heather Angel.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre (Borroloola@earthlink.net) wrote on IMDB:

In adapting his own stage play 'Berkeley Square' for the screen, playwright John L Balderston made numerous changes. One change is significant in hindsight: during Act One of the stage play, the dialogue makes several references to a war hero named Bill Clinton! (A hero on the side fighting AGAINST the United States.) In the film, this British officer is merely identified as Major Clinton, and there are no mentions of his heroics.

Leslie Howard, everyone's definitive Englishman, was actually English only by a fluke: his parents were Hungarian Jews who moved to London shortly before his birth. In the film version of 'Berkeley Square', Howard portrays two Americans -- one from the 18th century, one from the present -- but his accent and demeanour in both roles are quintessentially English. Howard had previously starred on Broadway in this story, but in the stage play he portrayed only the modern-day Peter Standish who journeys into the past; his namesake ancestor (swapping places with him in the present) remained offstage.   [ show more ]

Here we have the fantasy about a modern American who contrives to switch places in time with his 18th-century ancestor: both men are named Peter Standish, and are physically identical. (This is unlikely: the medical, dental and nutritional standards in 1784 would have kept that century's Standish looking very different from his descendant.) Apart from failing to convince me he's American, Howard gives an excellent performance in both roles. Soon enough, Peter Standish acquires a touch of Peter Ibbetson as he falls in love with a woman who will die in 1787, more than a century before his own birth.

The ever-reliable Samuel S. Hinds (wearing a bizarre moustache here) plays straight man to Howard in one fascinating scene, in which Standish explains the difference between linear time and non-linear time: in the latter, all the events in the universe are occurring simultaneously.

Also quite excellent is Betty Lawford in an unsympathetic role. She wears some very chic gloves but also sports a bizarre fur collar that seems to be intended for a female impersonator. A transvestite linebacker could hide his shoulders inside there!

As the doomed young lady of 18th-century England, Heather Angel has one memorable scene opposite the 18th-century Standish's body possessed by his modern descendant. Staring into Standish's eyes, she glimpses an amazing stock-footage montage of the chaos and mayhem of modern times. Her reaction is memorable.

A story like this will have intentional anachronisms, but I looked for unintentional errors. Here's one: a string ensemble in 1784 perform Gossec's 'Gavotte' two years before he wrote it. Have another: in the opening scene, set in September 1784, Lionel Belmore reports that a French aeronaut has just flown from Dover to Calais (Belmore mispronounces this name) in a balloon. Actually, that didn't happen until January 1785: the flight was in the opposite direction, and there were two men (one of them Anglo-American) in the balloon. In a later scene, some English gentlemen give the word 'bathed' the wrong pronunciation (yes, I'm quite certain). The art direction is generally excellent, except for a dodgy thunderstorm. And it's weird to encounter the term 'crux ansata' applied to what modern viewers know better as the Egyptian ankh.

The single worst thing about 'Berkeley Square' is the overscored soundtrack: practically every scene assaults the ears with loud background music, when so much of this gentle fantasy would have worked better with no music at all. I was delighted that the character actress Beryl Mercer is much less annoying than usual here, probably because (for once) she's been given no maudlin material. My rating for this gentle, stately fantasy is 7 out of 10. For a much more romantic treatment of this premise with a different set of time-travel paradoxes, I recommend a better movie: 'Somewhere in Time'. [ show less ]