I like your point about art movies turning the conventions of hard SF into metaphors -- I immediately thought of Godard's "Alphaville," though the metaphor there is interstellar travel, not time travel.

"Back to the Future" and "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" series are examples of *lowbrow* movies using hard SF conventions as metaphors. Because obviously what those movies are really about is the angst of being a white suburban-Californian teen in Reagan's America. Unable to realize that post-punk music is superior to rock'n'roll (which they worship; and that's a big part of their problem), the protagonists of these films slip into psychotic fantasies about time travel.

Seriously, though, you're helping me think historically about pre-Golden Age SF, whose pioneering metaphors will eventually become the Golden Age's hard SF conventions. Now you've *really* got me wishing I could afford a copy of E.V. Odle's 1923 novel "Clockwork Man," in which madness and time travel are also intimately connected. (In the far future, we'll all be cyborgs who can travel through time at will... unless the clockwork in your head goes awry, at which point you pop up at random times past and future, like it or not... plus you're already very confused.)

Not an art movie by any means, but "Somewhere in Time" leaves you wondering if Christopher Reeve has gone crazy. "A Christmas Carol" and "Connecticut Yankee" are stories (adapted more than once into movies) about time travelers who are probably only dreaming. "Time Bandits" also ends with the protagonist waking up in his bedroom -- but then there's that final twist, too. "Groundhog Day" is closer in spirit to "Somewhere in Time" (sentimental, earnest) than "Time Bandits" (ironic) I guess. But where does that leave "Demolition Man"?

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