First movie in which the past prevents significant change?

Question

In the Guy Pearce version of The Time Machine, he can frustratingly appear to have managed to change the past, but since he built the machine because his fiancé died, no matter what he does, she dies by various means: he can change the past but not the essential aspect that she indeed always dies. (It seems to me that there are other outcomes that would make him create a time machine -- what if she were merely extremely traumatized? Or merely insisted that he build the machine so she can see it, but in this movie, The Mind of the Creator (or whatever) keeps coming up with no plot lines that do not end in her death.

Anyway, I think the Pearce version may have been the first time travel movie that showed how the past could not be essentially changed. Of course in, for example, A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of x-mas past tells Scrooge that he is seeing shadows of the past that simply cannot be changed. But that is different than my question: a changeable past, but not changeable in the desired way.

One minor thought: I recall the line from "The Island of Dr. Moreau" in which the good doctor expresses frustration with his results: "The damned beast flesh keeps growing back!" and this strikes me as eerily similar to what happens to the professor in Pearce version.(I am pretty sure the originally Wells story does not have this essential immutability theme in it.)

EDIT: It appears there were many stories before 2002 The Time Machine which (I am guessing based on the responses) had the details of the past change but not the main outcome so changing to first movie.

Answer 1

Fortunately, there is legitimate academic work on this

Micklethwait's doctoral thesis at the Australian National University is bang on point.

The Time Machine (2002) is identified as an open past, open future, converging timeline without causal loops: that means the time traveller could make changes in the past, and those would create changes in the future but that the timeline would converge back to its original shape. Which is what you describe.

The oldest film that Miclethwait analysed (and he was pretty comprehensive) that met these criteria was Tay Garnet's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), starring Bing Crosby and Rhonda Fleming.

Interestingly, both are based on eponymous 19th-century novels by H. G Wells (1895) and Mark Twain (1889) respectively. I've read both, but I can't remember if the time travel paradigm in the books is the same as in the movies. I will note that George Pal's The Time Machine (1960), starring Rod Taylor, had a different time paradigm from the 2002 version: it was closed past, closed future, fixed without causal loops. I will say the 1960 version is a much better movie.