Stolen Hours

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

TIME AFTER TIME

Directed and Written by Nicholas Meyer

Making his escape from a hue and cry in London in 1893, Jack the Ripper lifts the Time Machine from H.G. Wells and pilots it to San Francisco in 1979. There the Ripper (portrayed with menacing cynicism by David Warner) continues his depradations, pursued by the outraged inventor (Malcolm McDowell).

This is easily the year's most preposterous movie premise, requiring one to accept many items on faith: that Wells did not merely imagine the Time Machine but actually built it in his basement; that since it operates in the fourth dimension it can be in two different times and places simultaneously so both hero and villain can use it; and, most important, that a film involving history's most notorious sex criminal can turn out to be an entertainment of considerable wit, charm and, of all things, romantic sweetness.

Yet if audiences can grant the picture its imaginative leaps, and go with its surprising tone, they will be pleasantly rewarded. The wit derives mainly from Writer-Director Meyer's wry confrontations between Futurist Wells and a world that does not in any way match his optimistic projections of things to come. Whether trying to adjust to the automobile, a Big Mac or a Mickey Mouse telephone, Wells is a consistently appealing figure. After playing lots of reprehensible characters (A Clockwork Orange) McDowell exhibits a first-rate change-up. Even more surprising is Mary Steenburgen as the junior bank officer who converts both the Ripper's and Wells' antique pounds into dollars and is thus the crucial link in their chase. Her portrayal of a liberated woman fighting and loving in two centuries is a unique amalgam of vulnerability and slow-spoken shrewdness.

Time After Time has, in addition to its delicate tone, more than adequate suspense. It also makes a worthwhile if not highly original point, stated most clearly by Warner as he flips from one violent image to another on television: "Ninety years ago I was a freak; today I'm an amateur." For Meyer, author of the bestselling The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, it is a promising and interesting directorial debut, requiring a deftness that has eluded more experienced moviemakers. We are in his debt for a bold idea skippingly brought off.

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