A Journey to the Beginning of Time

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.

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).

Originally filmed in Czechoslovakia in 1954, the American Museum of Natural History filmed new scenes in 1967 for this remarkable study of prehistoric life which uses high-quality stop motion animation.

The story goes like this: a group of young boys rent a boat at an inner-city park and enter a small cave at the edge of the lake. When they come out the other side of the cave they find themselves on a river in an uninhabited area. As they float down the river each day, they travel progressively further back into the past, encountering wooly mammoths, prehistoric rhinoceros, and numerous dinosaurs -- all of which are extremely well animated, photographed, and matted. Written and directed by Karl Zeman, who gave us the unique film `The Fabulous World of Jules Verne' (release in 1958).

During the 1960s, `Journey to the Beginning of Time' was shown in serialized form on television in some areas (Atlanta, for one), amazing animation fans like me with this unexpected treat. For about two weeks I would stumble out of bed, fix breakfast, and then choke on it while I watched each morning's episode of this remarkable little gem.

My father is a film maker, an American who has lived in Prague for more than 40 years. He would bring back things from Eastern Europe in the early '60's. One of them was a 16 mm print of a film titled "Lost River". It had poor English dubbing but the stop motion animation of the various prehistoric creatures was pretty spectacular for the time. This was not the English language version of Cesta do praveku that was distributed as Journey to the beginning of time in the States, but just a dubbed version of the original Czech film.

My brothers and I ran that film time and again and that as well as repeated viewings of King Kong was responsible for giving me a lifelong interest in both dinosaurs and stop-motion.

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! ;)