Voyage dans la préhistoire

I saw this movie at the theater in the mid-late '60s. I spent years and years trying to find out the name of it based only on my memories of a few of the scenes. I finally tracked it down and got a VHS copy and watched it with my husband and son. My son (11) was totally cracking up the whole time, spoiled by all the movies he's seen. Yes, the dubbing is hokey and horrible, and the stop action primitive compared to today, but to an 8 yr old in the '60s it was wonderful! I may have to hunt down an original copy without the extra US storyline that was put in. I'm just glad that I found this movie, prove to my husband that I'm not crazy and it did exist and can now move on with my life! ;)

I saw this movie on television when I was just a boy. It was back then, when we had no video recorders or even DVD players in east Germany, and the only chance to see the beloved films again, was to wait... and wait... and wait... until they would be broadcasted once again. Maybe. And now, 25 years later, I had the luck to see all the Karel Zeman movies of my youth again. Aside the "antique" technical aspects, these films are still as good as in my memories. But old-fashioned technical details do not bother me, because the stories still work. And by the way: The Zeman - style was forerunning in that time. His combinations of live-action and animated scenes were unique! I watched "Journey to the Beginning of Time" recently with my son (6 years old) - and he was excited (as much as I). If you have the possibility to watch these Zeman films again - do it, they are worth it!

The english dubbed version of this film was broken into installments and shown on the "Garfield Goose" show on WGN in the 1970's.

If you loved prehistoric life as a child, this film is perfect. The plot concerns four boys who travel down an otherworldly river and encounter the various stages of prehistoric life along the way. The stop-motion dinosaurs and numerous other prehistoric animals not usually seen on film (as far as I know, this is the only film that ever recreated the Carboniferous Age), as well as the painted backdrops, are imaginatively conceived and executed. The characters of the four boys are also humanely and realistically developed (a rarity for children's characters in films), so that _Cesta do praveku_ is equally enjoyable for adults. Unfortunately, the American version is horribly dubbed and has a ludicrous prologue to explain how the boys got to the river tacked on by the distributor; but the originality of the film still comes through, so it's worth watching if the original Czech version is unavailable (as it mostly is).

What a difference a few years makes (eg., this is a follow-up to an earlier post of mine).

Both the US and the original Czech versions are out there for sale these days (try ebay - and go for the DVD! The Czech version, at least, is cut from a wonderful print).

How the distributors of the US version ever came up with four boys falling asleep in the American Museum of Natural History and transgressing time via an Indian shaman statue is beyond me, but it was a pretty ingenious way of putting a domestic mystical stamp on a foreign film.

The Czech version begins with the character known as "Doc" in the US version recounting his "journey" while reviewing his diary. Before long, the four boys are seen emerging from the cave (which was supposedly located in Central Park in the US version) into the realm of the Ice Age, after which, the film proceeds as the movie we all know with a few notable exceptions: occasional shots of "Doc's" diary written in Czech, and an ending very different from what American audiences have seen - a seashore sequence in which the boys find a living trilobite, and closing shot of the narrator summing up the movie before fading out. (How the boys got back from their 4.5 billion year trip will remain a mystery until I get someone to translate the Czech dialog!) There appears to be no pontificating over how the boys had reached "creation" - and no footage to accompany it (the US version has shots of spouting lava and twisting luminous geometric shapes suggesting not only the beginning of earth but of the universe itself).

Despite extensive credit given to the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in the US version (namely, Edwin Colbert, prominent paleontologist at the time), it's apparent that, after viewing the Czech version, the Museum's input was limited to the museum sequences. The original movie is all Karel Zamen's - along with whichever Czech(s) who served as his paleo-documentarian(s).

Still a mystery, however, is why (as I stated in an earlier post) North American fossil vertebrates feature prominently in the film. The Styracosaur, the Sabertooth cat and, most notably, the grotesque Uintatherium featured are all unique to the American West.

Perhaps Zamen was not as isolated from US influences as life behind the Iron Curtain would have us think.