Twilight Zone 1.5 Walking Distance
The one where Gig Young plays a burned out New York advertising executive who tries to visit his hometown. What rating would you give this one?
share10
shareTen sounds about right.
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MovieChat Forums > The Twilight Zone (1959) Discussion > Twilight Zone 1.5 Walking Distance
Strong performance by Young as the type A personality trying to recapture the spirit and simple joy of his youth, there is an early cameo by Ron Howard as a boy he encounters playing with marbles. An early exploration of what happens to the space time continuum if one encounters oneself, later dealt with in films such as Back to the Future, 12 Monkeys, Terminator, Looper... I wonder if it was the first. Instead of fancy wormholes, they used a simple shot through a mirror to convey him through time. This is another episode which would have been much more powerful viewing it in 1959 rather than today after so many other films have covered this conundrum. I was frustrated with the clumsy way Young's character handled his experience but then I realized he never grew up watching the time travel rulebook like we did.
share Marty McFly handled himself in the past pretty clumsily too: he gets hit by his mom's pop which triggers a chain of events that among other complications finds him the object of his mom's lust. If memory serves Cole got committed for his troubles. And Reese got arrested. So I wouldn't exactly say they handled their time-travelling in any less ungainly a manner than Martin Sloan. And Sloan's clumsiness in the past is in part a byproduct of his arrested development -- he's lived under the delusion that he can go home again, a delusion his experience cures him of for good.
What I liked about "Walking Distance" was that we're never shown any mechanism. In other words, there's nary a DeLorean to be seen. Since this is "The Twilight Zone" a supernatural element was probably involved. However, the subtlety of the episode, permits one, if so inclined, to chalk up Sloan's time-traveling as maybe just a dream he had after falling into a ditch or something whilst on his way to Homewood. And the limp he sports at the episode's end might just be an old injury exacerbated by the fall ... Again, Sloan probably went back in time but I appreciated the absence of any time-traveling device.
It's very subtle but the transition is shown from the reflection on the cigarette machine at the gas station to the mirror at the soda fountain. McFly kept things to himself when he recognized his mother and father, he didn't grab them desperately by the lapels and scare the hell out of them. Even worse, was when he was stalking his previous self carving the initials and then on the merry go round. I even thought perhaps he had transitioned as his child self in an adult body a la the film Big, but then I realized no, he was only freaked out about the situation as anyone would be without the years of time traveling canon information and etiquette guidelines that we now have.
shareI think you can interpret that shot of Sloan framed by the mirror of the cigarette machine any number of ways -- and yes it can be a time-traveling device if you choose (it's shots like that, incidentally, that make "Twilight Zone" so good).
"time traveling canon information and etiquette guidelines that we now have"
Imagine how much better Sloan's comportment in the past might have been had he been privy to those rules?
And Marty kept his hands to himself because his over-sexed mom wouldn't.
And while he kept his hands off his parents he certainly had no compunctions cold-cocking Biff and disrupting the time-space continuum as a result.
Well the title of the episode is Walking Distance, but he never actually walks there... the camera does the work for him, taking him from the station to the soda fountain. It refers to something physically very close but temporally so far, like Parmenides river something that can never be truly recreated again. Normally dreams of that era were conveyed formally by a blurry dissolve with some harp music but even though his desperate behavior is reminiscent of dream logic behavior, it's clear with the decor of the fountain, the '34 car with the rumble seat, the price of the soda, and the reveal of the now dead owner in the back room that it is a time travel situation, not a dream. If it were a dream they wouldn't have added that specific shot of the soda jerk and the owner.
share Like I said earlier it's probably time-travel of the real kind. But it's nice that no bombast is employed like "Back to the Future" to let us know Sloan has returned to his childhood. And I don't necessarily think the episode showing us the interaction between soda jerk and owner means he literally went back in time. Sure, he probably did ... but then those two conversing could still be a part of a dream. Haven't you ever dreamed from another person's perspective? I have.
You do though make some good points in your argument's favor.
Incidentally, is this your first time watching "The Twilight Zone"? Or, have you caught some episodes during the marathons?
I've only seen some random episodes before... probably somewhere between 10% to 20% of them I'd guess.
shareAnd what has been a stand-out episode so far?
Nothing yet although I've been enjoying them... I remember seeing the one with Burgess Meredith and the library and the one about the hangman when I was a kid... those stood out.
shareWhat's the one about the hangman? I can think of two off the top of my head: "Execution" and "Dust."
sharean Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge I believe also known as La riviere du hibou.
share "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" was amazing ... except it was made by other people. "Twilight Zone" during Season Five was on the verge of going over-budget so in order to keep CBS happy they purchased a property that already existed.
Another anthology series at the time, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," also ran this short film.
When I was a child, seeing these for the first time, I would've considered this one of the "boring" ones...
My, how time and perspective changes things. When I saw it again as an adult, I immediately understood the power of this episode. Probably my number 1 of all TZs. I love everything about it: the story, the acting, the score. Everything. Definitely a 10.
Wow, everyone really loves this one... I liked it but I didn't really empathize with Gig Young's character enough to connect with it as much you all did. He was arrogant, and I guess that's the point as you are supposed to see him as the little boy who still wanted magical summers but he put me off the way he was talking to the service station attendant and even the soda jerk.
shareSee, I didn't really find him to be arrogant, but more tired, disillusioned, let down by what he thought his future would be, as opposed to what it actually is. I got a feeling of hopelessness from him. That the only way out was through the past.
I don't know, I think you're supposed to see him as one of those brash Don Draper/Roger Sterling types who would fit in perfectly in 1959, but today looked upon more as macho, chauvinistic, class conscious dinosaurs where the help are considered beneath you and should address you as Mister. The only thing that may have humbled him was the version of Sloan who grew up with a limp... but we never got to see enough of that man to really tell.
shareRod Serling thought very little of the Don Draper/Roger Sterling types. Wait until you get to the similar "A Stop At Willougby."
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