No Time Like the Past

Plot

Disgusted with 20th Century problems such as world wars, atomic weapons and radioactive poisoning, Paul Driscoll (Dana Andrews) solicits the help of his colleague Harvey (Robert F. Simon) and uses a time machine, intent to remake the present by altering past events.

Paul first travels to Hiroshima in August 1945 and attempts to warn a Hiroshima police captain about the atomic bomb and tries to convince him to evacuate the city. Paul’s warnings however are dismissed and he is unable to change history.

Paul then travels to a Berlin hotel room to assassinate Adolf Hitler in August 1939 (immediately before the outbreak of World War II the following month), but his plans are interrupted when a hotel housekeeper knocks on his door and later calls two SS guards to his room, causing him to leave before he can shoot Hitler.

On his third journey to the past, Paul tries to change the course of Lusitania to avoid being torpedoed (by a World War I German U-boat), but is unable to do so when the ship’s captain questions his credibility.

Paul accepts the hypothesis that the past cannot be changed. He then plans to return to the past, resolving not to make any changes, but rather just to live out his own life in a time free of the problems of the modern age. He uses the time machine to journey to the town of Homeville, Indiana in 1881. Upon his arrival, he realizes that President James A. Garfield will be shot the next day, but resists the temptation to try to intervene. He stays at a boarding house in town and meets Abigail Sloan (Patricia Breslin), a fellow resident and teacher at Homeville’s schoolhouse. At one of the boarding house’s dinners, Paul gets into an argument with another boarder over war and imperialism. He later reads in a history book from his own time that Homeville's schoolhouse will burn down because of a kerosene lantern ejected from a runaway wagon. Knowing that the safety of children is at stake, Paul breaks his vow not to try to change the past. But his actions to avert the incident instead inadvertently cause the fire he intended to prevent.

Afterward, Paul tells Abigail that "the past is sacred" and, despite the romantic feelings that have developed between the two, he accepts that he belongs in the 20th Century. He returns to his own time and declares that instead of continuing to fixate upon the past, he will now try to do something to positively impact the future.