Journey to the Beginning of Time

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Journey to the Beginning of Time
Directed by	Karel Zeman
Release date(s)	1955
Running time	93 min.
Country	Czechoslovakia
Language	Czech
IMDb profile

Journey to the Beginning of Time (Cz. Cesta do pravěku-Trip into Prehistory) is a pioneering science fiction feature film by Karel Zeman released in 1955 in Czechoslovakia under the title Cesta do pravěku. Following its release, the film won awards at the International Film Festivals of Venice and Mannheim, and is an excellent example of the animation skills of Karel Zeman. Cesta do pravěku was remarkably convincing, even when compared to recent efforts that use computer animation technology, and the magnificent colour backdrops and authentic sound effects all added to the film's atmosphere. One of the reasons for the film's success is that Zeman was influenced by the palaeo-art of the celebrated Czech artist Zdenek Burian (1905-1981), upon whose work much of the film's imagery is based (two exceptions being the Stegosaurus and the carnivorous theropod which attacks it). In some cases, 2-D copies of animals depicted by Burian were superimposed on the background as they were animated (one example being the brontosaur sequence), whilst other scenes depicted by Burian were recreated using 3-D animated models.

In addition to numerous miniature animal models and 2-D 'profiles', Zeman also used much larger models of heads and bodies of prehistoric animals (including a Stegosaurus), as well as life-sized model plants (as in the Carboniferous forest sequence, and when the boys encounter the Styracosaurus). The film featured sweeping, painted vistas as backdrop landscapes for both the animation and live sequences, and the effect was a film that is superior in many ways to other animation films of both its own and subsequent eras.

Another 'version' of the film was released nine years later by William Cayton of the United States, who rather unfortunately substituted the evocative opening scenes of the original with American boys in New York who enter the film as in a dream whilst visiting the American Museum of Natural History. The result was a less convincing film than the Czech original (for obvious reasons, the faces of the boys could not be shown until the Czech sequence started, and the dubbing of the dialogue is very poor).

Although Cesta do pravěku was made on what would be considered a small budget by western film-makers, it was done sincerely and very skillfully, and was also a good educational resource as it discussed the various time epochs as defined by palaeontologists, and the types of animals that lived within those time periods.

The film was 92 minutes long. It was sliced into short segments (about 6 minutes each) for presentation as a serial, syndicated to various children's television programs, a live-action alternative to the typical cartoon fare.

[edit] Plot

The story involves four teenage boys who take a rowboat along a river that enters a cave, and find themselves in a tunnel that opens out onto a river in prehistoric times. As they travel downstream they find they are traveling farther back in time, and facing various perils along the way. The plot is very similar to that of the novel 'Plutonia' by the Russian palaeontologist Vladimir Obruchev, where a team of Russian explorers enter the Earth's crust via an Arctic portal, and follow a river that leads them through a chronological sequence of past geological eras and animal life.