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Time Machine Lightning History

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from The Time Machine (2002)
Created by Simon Wells
Distributed by Warner Brothers
Posted byCritical Commons Manager

A compressed montage of historical signifiers focusing on a hundred years of air travel

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Lightning history montage in Time Machine

by Critical Commons Manager

The compression of time in this sequence from The Time Machine (2002) focuses on the evolution of air travel in the 20th century.

The cinematic trope of the lightning history montage takes many forms. This is a rare example that does not rely on televisual signifiers of historical events, instead depicting generic shifts in cultural signifiers (the part of this sequence showing rising and falling hemlines in a department store window is quoted directly from the 1960 version of the film) followed by a contrived sequence in which time passage is marked by increasingly sophisticated machines for air travel.

Copyright 2010, by the Contributing Authors. Cite/attribute Resource. ccManager. (2010, May 20). Lightning history montage in Time Machine. Retrieved May 22, 2012, from Critical Commons Web site: http://criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/commentaries/lightning-history-montage-in-time-machine. This work is licensed under a No Copyright; No Rights Reserved.