Reel time at the movies

By Ben McCann

As a child, I vividly remember watching Superman (1978) and staring slack jawed as the Man of Steel flew incredibly fast around the Earth, made it stop spinning forward and jolted it into a backwards whirl. So distraught was he after discovering Lois Lane had tragically died in an earthquake that he flew up, up and away, quite literally turned back time, and brought Lois back from the dead. 

Fast forward to Back to the Future (1985), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Dunkirk (2017) - I’ve always been fascinated with how film treats time. Temporal manipulation can be visually arresting, beautifully contemplative and sometimes plain bonkers. In a skilled director’s hands, time becomes malleable, flexible and, on occasions, illogical. As the great French director Jean-Luc Godard once famously said: “A film must have a beginning, a middle, and an end…but not necessarily in that order.” 

That’s not to say that linear storytelling cannot be highly effective. Films that follow a chronological sequence, where events unfold in the order they happen, are the default narrative mode for a reason: they are easy to follow! A wonderful example of this mode is The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which follows the life of Andy Dufresne, a man wrongly imprisoned, over several decades. The linear progression of time allows us to witness Dufresne’s transformation and the gradual development of his plan to escape. 

The flipside of the linear narrative are non-linear structures that present events out of chronological order. Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) tells the story of Leonard Shelby, a man with short-term memory loss who tries to find his wife’s killer. The film is structured with two narrative threads: one moving forward in time and the other moving backward. This unconventional approach mirrors Leonard’s disoriented mental state, allowing the audience to experience his confusion and frustration. Memento’s manipulation of time serves both as a narrative device and as a way to explore themes of memory, identity, and the subjective nature of reality. 

A film must have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order

Some directors have made their reputation on using “real time” storytelling – that is, a sequence presented exactly as it occurs, without any edits or jumps in time. Think of the opening moments of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil (1958) or Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), or the ‘Copacabana’ scene in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990) - all employ long, continuous shots, with no cuts. 

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most memorable films was Rope (1948), which unfolds entirely in “real time” (he shot in continuous, unedited 10-minute takes). Another example is High Noon (1952), in which a town marshal prepares for a showdown with a group of outlaws set to arrive on the noon train. As the clock ticks closer to midday, the tension rises. It’s a fabulous “race-against-the-clock” film that reminds us that Hollywood has often used time creatively to evoke heightened emotional responses. 

Slow cinema evokes emotion in a very different way. Once a decade since 1952, the British Film Institute’s in-house magazine, Sight and Sound, has polled film makers, critics, curators and programmers from around the world, asking them to name their 10 best films ever made. In 2022, the winner was Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Its plot? A mother performing domestic chores in microscopic detail, including peeling potatoes for 20 minutes. 

Jeanne Dielman is a perfect example of ‘slow cinema’ – a filmmaking style known for its deliberate pacing and minimalistic storytelling. These films are not afraid to take their time. But they use “real time” in a different way to Hitchcock – they are not thrilling or exciting; rather, they showcase the mundane and the ordinary and ask us to contemplate the world in newer, slower ways. 

Science fiction films have traditionally been the genre best adapted to temporal distortions: Star Trek (1966) used warp speed and Star Wars (1977) used light speed. These films often transport us to mysterious dimensions where the usual rules of time no longer apply. 12 Monkeys (1995), The Terminator (1984) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014) deliberately contort time to disorient and confuse us through their use of time loops and time dilation. 

Flashbacks and flashforwards are also common techniques used to reveal key plot points at critical moments. In The Godfather Part II (1974), Francis Ford Coppola uses flashbacks to tell the parallel stories of Vito Corleone’s rise to power in the early 20th century and his son Michael’s consolidation of power in the 1950s. 

The contrast between past and present creates a compelling comparison between father and son and highlights the themes of legacy, power, and the cyclical nature of violence seeded throughout both films. 

Time loops and repetition in film often feature characters experiencing the same events multiple times, with subtle variations or changes that reflect their growing understanding of how the time loop works, and crucially, how to escape it. The most famous example here remains Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day (1993), ostensibly a comedy that in fact explores weighty themes of fate and free will. 

Phil Connors, a cynical weatherman, finds himself trapped in a loop, reliving the same day over and over again. As Phil repeats the day, he evolves, and his mood shifts from frustration and despair to eventual self-improvement. The time loop serves as a metaphor for personal growth and the potential for change, as Phil learns to become a better person through his repeated experiences. 

If all of these loops and backwards-forwards motions seem like narrative gimmicks designed to hold our attention, then check out Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014). This marvellous work uses cinematic time as both a narrative and thematic element. Filmed over the course of 12 years, the film follows the life of a young boy named Mason (Ellar Coltrane) as he grows up. 

The real-time ageing of the actors adds a deeply affecting layer of authenticity to Boyhood: we see Ellar imperceptibly grow from a child to a young man. As a meditation on the fleeting nature of childhood, Linklater’s film reminds us of the passage of time and the inevitable changes that come with it. 

Linklater is not done with temporal experiments just yet – his current project is Merrily We Roll Along, an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical which traces the lives of its three protagonists over twenty years… in reverse. Linklater plans on filming a scene every two years, which means we’ll likely see the final version in the early 2040s.

Dr Ben McCann SFHEA is Associate Professor of French Studies – and an avid film scholar and writer.