Journey to the Beginning of Time
| Journey to the Beginning of Time | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Karel Zeman |
Release date | 1955 |
Running time | 93 min. |
| Country | Czechoslovakia |
| Language | Czech |
Journey to the Beginning of Time (Cz. Cesta do Pravěku - Trip into Prehistory) is a science fiction feature film by Karel Zeman (1910-1989) released in 1955 in Czechoslovakia under the title Cesta do Pravěku. Regarded as a leading example of Zeman's animation skills[citation needed], it was the first of his productions to include actors in conjunction with animation and special effects, and won awards at the International Film Festivals of Venice and Mannheim. The documentary-type nature of the film was unusual for its era and pre-empted many later TV productions that depicted prehistoric life for educational rather than purely entertainment purposes.
Plot
The story involves four teenage comrades who take a rowboat along a "river of time" that flows into a mysterious cave and emerges on the other side onto a strange, primeval landscape. The boy actors were Josef Lukáš (Petr, the main narrator), Petr Herrmann (Tonik, who also narrates in part), Zdeněk Husták (Jenda), and Vladimír Bejval (Jirka). As they make their way upstream, they realise that they are travelling progressively farther back in time, and facing various prehistoric perils as they do so. The animals depicted in Cesta do Pravěku were never shown interacting with animals of other periods and it is assumed that different parts of the river represented distinct time periods. The plot is somewhat similar to that of the novel Plutonia (1915) by the Russian palaeontologist Vladimir Obruchev, in which a team of Russian explorers enter the Earth's crust via an Arctic portal (a huge depression in the Earth surface created many millions of years previously by the impact of a giant asteroid, into which prehistoric animals had entered), and follow a river that leads them through a sequence of past geological eras and associated animal life. Some scenes in Cesta do Pravěku were probably[vague] also inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World novel (1912), including Petr being pursued by a Phorusrhacos and the group being attacked by enraged pterodactyls.
Production
Considered the most highly accomplished children's film of its genre[by whom?], the use of varied and seamless production techniques ensured that the film was free of the jerky, flickering stop-motion sequences that characterised Hollywood's animated films until the advent of computer-generated imagery. Filming took place on the Morava river near Bzenec town in the Czech Republic at the nature reserve named (in Czech) Osypané břehy and on studio sets.
Zeman was heavily influenced by the palaeo-art of the celebrated Czech artist Zdeněk Burian (1905-1981), and much of the film's imagery was inspired by Burian reconstructions that had been painted under the guidance of Czech palaeontologist Josef Augusta (1903-1968). In some scenes, 2-D 'profile' images of animals originally depicted by Burian were filmed in real time (as in the Styracosaurus sequences), whilst other well-known Burian scenes were recreated in stop-motion using a combination of 2-and 3-D models (as in the Deinotherium and Uintatherium sequences). Possibly for the sake of continuity[original research?], Zeman even used models or 2-D profiles when depicting extant species including bison, a python, flamingos, vultures, various antelopes, giraffes, and a jaguar (which was briefly spliced with footage of a real animal in one of only three instances of live species footage). In some scenes, where necessary, miniature models of the actors and their boat/raft were also animated.
In addition to numerous miniature animal models and 2-D 'profiles', Zeman also used larger models of heads and bodies of animals (including a full-size 'dead' Stegosaurus and the swimming Brontosaurus and Trachodon models), as well as life-sized model plants (as in the Carboniferous forest sequence, and during the encounter with the Styracosaurus). The use of 2-D profiles and 3-D models animated by concealed means had the advantage of being able to film in real time without the need for labour-intensive stop-motion. Two of the film's prehistoric species were not based on Burian images; the Stegosaurus and the Ceratosaurus with which it fights in a twilight scene (it remains unclear as to why Zeman did not use Burian images in these instances).
Cesta do Pravěku was made on what would be considered a small budget by western film-makers [quantify]. It discussed the various time epochs as defined by palaeontologists and the types of animals typical of those periods. Whilst many animated feature films, particularly those in the US, used models of prehistoric animals in contrived environments, Zeman instead depicted animals acting naturally in their own environments as if in a documentary, with the actors observing from the relative safety of the river. Such a philosophy was unusual at the time and was more typical of later TV productions that depicted prehistoric animals in an educational context[example needed] and which became popular following the advent of computer-generated imagery that had negated the need for time-consuming, highly-skilled manual animation. The original release film was 93 minutes, although the East German release had a slightly shorter running time.
Marketing and retrospectives
Another version of the film was released nine years later in the US by William Cayton whose company had been marketing Russian animated cartoons and feature films from the 1940-'50s, especially those of the famous Soyuzmultfilm studios (well known titles included The Firebird, The Frog Prince, Beauty & the Beast, The Space Explorers, and Twelve Months). The films were dubbed, sometimes re-titled, partitioned into chapters and distributed to US TV stations. In the case of Cesta do Pravěku, the opening scenes of the original were replaced with new footage of American boys who entered the film in a dream squence whilst visiting the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The film was edited into short segments (about six minutes each) for presentation as a serial, syndicated to various children's television programs. The US version was released on VHS video by Goodtimes in 1994.
In April 2001 Cesta do Pravěku was screened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the retrospective entitled The Fabulous World of Karel Zeman. In 2010, it featured at the 50th Zlín Film Festival (May 30 - June 6) in the Czech Republic, one day of which (June 4) was dedicated to Karel Zeman to honour the centenary of his birth. The four original actors also attended the ceremonies (three from the Czech Republic and one - Vladimír Bejval - from the US).
In 2004 a DVD version of the film appeared in Japan, in Germany in 2005, and Spain in 2007. The Japanese and Spanish versions had different digital masters. The first German DVD had no digitally remastered images, but another German version with Czech and German dialogue, and 15 min of extras showing some of Zeman's filming techniques, was released in Jan 2010. This version used some modified sound effects for the dubbing, and the picture quality is below that of the original [citation needed]. Unfortunately the announced DVD of the original was held back for licence-juridical reasons and copies remain unavailable commercially (as of August 2010).