Journey to the
Beginning of Time
(aka JOURNEY TO PRIMAEVAL TIMES, CESTA DO PRAVEKU)
With: Vladimir Bejval (as "Victor Betral") (Jo-Jo), Petr Herrman (as "Peter Hermann") (Tony), Zdenek Hustak, Josef Lukas (as "James Lucas") ("Doc"), Charles Goldsmith (Ben)
English-Language Versions:
Plot Outline: Four young boys visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. After viewing the dinosaur skeletons, they rent a rowboat at the lake in Central Park. They enter a cave, and come out on the other side into a strange new world. They see a Wooly Mammoth, and realize they have traveled back to prehistoric times! The boys encounter many prehistoric creatures, and travel further and further back, to the very beginning of time!
***
JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME is a fascinating U.S./Czech hybrid, a most unusual attempt to match characters from a foreign source film into newly shot footage. The source film, CESTA DO PRAVEKU, by famed Czech animator/director Karel Zeman (THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE), is a wondrous adventure film with excellent special effects. The added U.S. footage cleverly mimics the look and characterizations of the Czech film, creating a nearly-seamless new production.
The film starts with an arty credits montage, featuring some attractive, prismatic opticals. We then read a disclaimer stating, "If one were to journey back to primeval times, one would likely see a world largely as depicted in this film"!
The film proper begins with a fascinating eight-minute U.S. prologue, filmed in good ole Manhattan, as our four young heroes walk across the Queensboro Bridge, stroll through Central Park, and end up at the American Museum of Natural History.
In good low-budget film tradition, the kids are filmed with their backs to us, thus avoiding the need for lip-synching. Also, the main kid makes sure to mention buying "some funny hats" from a funny little man; this proves pivotal, as their funny hats are needed to match the weird hats worn by the actors in the Czech film!
In the museum, we are treated to nice stock footage of dinosaur skeletons, which turns into a veritable lecture on the Jurassic age. For reasons unbeknownst to us at the time, "Doc", the oldest boy, takes special pains to mention a creepy Native American statue he sees, and how it seems to be hypnotizing them...
The kids then go rowing in Central Park, and enter a cave, which we see via a terribly crude drawing. We then cut to the Czech film, in a primitive yet effective transition. The Czech footage is fairly amazing; the boys row through immense ice floes, and past magnificent vistas and landscapes.
The first fantastic scene occurs when the boys spot a giant wooly mammoth, a
great stop-motion creation, and they realize they have somehow traveled back in time. They give this startling development nary a thought, but that's artistic license for you (just as why four young boys were allowed to go camping by themselves in the first place is barely feasible).
The exceptional stop-motion subjects include wild geese, bison, battling wooly rhinos, flamingoes, gazelles, elephants, a saber tooth tiger, a buzzard, a giant ostrich, flying Pteranadons, Styracasaurus, Stegosaurus, Trachydon, Brontosaurus, and other assorted monsters of the old world. Showing these ancient monsters cavorting in their natural habitat creates a sublime and fanciful scenario, and the animation is easily on par with that of O'Brien or Harryhausen.
There is also an abundance of process shots which show the live actors in the foreground and the prehistoric monsters in the background, and these are also quite impressive.
After a dinosaur fight, the boys approach and touch the carcass of a felled Stegosaurus. It is the first time we have seen a creature (model) and actors in the same shot. The effect of merging these two previously distinct worlds is startling.
It is at this time that the first really "bad" thing happens to the boys; their boat is crushed by a monster. Suddenly, survival becomes uncertain. The first few shifts in chronology had served merely as changes in a prehistoric slide show, without much emotional involvement. Then, an event actually effects their survival, and the story becomes personal.
As they travel yet further back in time on a makeshift raft, we see that the heroes themselves are evolving, backwards, in order to survive; in short, they are becoming primitive!
Also, we watch the actors for the first half of the film from a great distance. Likewise, the boys see all the prehistoric creatures from far away, as if in a movie. In the last reels of the film, we get intimate close-ups and intense dialogue exchanges, as the boys' adventure shifts from amusing to dramatic.
At about the same time, we are treated to some incredible sets, studio-bound prehistoric landscapes which are quite fanciful and beautiful.
The pivotal scene in the film involves Jo-Jo, the smallest boy, encountering a small dinosaur in the swamplands. He has to fight off this tiny but vicious creature with a stick, in order to retrieve "Doc's" all-important diary of their journey. Although the dino is a cute puppet-creature, we feel the real fear and danger that Jo-Jo fears, mere inches away from this unpredictable and foreign beast. Thus, Jo-Jo is the only real hero in the movie.
Indeed, when Jo-Jo presents the diary to the grief-stricken "Doc", we realize that his contribution (his heroism, in fact) was in demonstrating that individual courage is the key to group survival.
In true mythology fashion, the heroes finally return to the sea, and know they are now saved. Then, a montage of volcano footage; the creation of the world, history's own apocalypse. Another optical montage, as in the credits (and not dissimilar to sequences found in films like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY).
Finally, a bonafide jaw-dropper ending, for anyone still paying close attention to the plot: as it turns out, the Indian statue at the Museum had indeed hypnotized the boys! They had either hallucinated the whole adventure, or were transported to another time portal by the wily Native American! Doc notices his diary, all beaten up from his trip through time; proof that it was not a dream! It was either an actual out-of-body experience, or a forced illusion. (This is an unusual twist for a multi-nation hybrid, having the key plot point occur not in the source film, but in the added footage.)
Doc further obscures any explanation with his final words: "Can man transcend the barrier of time? Project himself into the past or into the future? I wish I knew!"
The kids had circumvented the most important question of all; how did they get there? The boys then realize that they had suspended disbelief all this time, without really knowing why. Similarly, the audience realizes that they had been hypnotized as well; why else would we believe that crummy illustration of the ancient cave was the pivotal shot in the movie, because it merged the realistic and fantastic stories together? We, too, suspended disbelief in grand fashion.
At root, JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME is a story of man's struggle for survival against a hostile environment. The boys survive violent weather and predatory creatures, and discover the importance of fire and quick thinking to outwit their enemies, thus mirroring the path of man's intellectual evolution. A pervasive sense of naive wonder seasoned with melancholia also adds to the overall effect of this most singular film.
What's more exciting, the film itself evolves, going from aloof to intense as the boys' predicament gets more serious. What starts out as a curious quasi-documentary becomes captivating high drama by films' end, mirroring the protagonists' increasing emotional involvement in their situation. Perhaps this, and not merely his acclaimed effects, is the genius of Karel Zeman. Regardless, JBT is magnificent fantasy cinema.
JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME was originally shown in the U.S., in serialized form, as five-minute chapters syndicated to television. New Trends released the film as a feature in 1966, and Childhood Productions re-released the film in 1967.
"The film was indeed shown in serialzied form on TV. One such example is Chicago-based WGN TV's kids series, Garfield Goose & Friends, hosted by Frazier Thomas. Thomas' 'Prime Minister' character would screen episodes of the film every day on 'The Little Theater Screen' inside of King Garfield Goose' palace, to the wonderment of his young viewers. The screening of this film in serialized form was prasied by viewers in 'The Windy City,' a fact which Mr.Thomas mentioned in a Chicago radio interview prior to his death in 1985."
Video/DVD availability:VHS (Goodtimes, oop), DVD (???)
Links of related interest:
(1955, Czechoslovakia) live-action/animated color 92 minutes
Ceskoslovensky Statni Film / Filmove Studio Gottwaldov
Directed by Karel Zeman
Screenplay: Karel Zeman, J.A. Novotny
Cinematography: Vaclav Pazdernik, Antonin Horak (as "Anthony Huston")
Music: E.F. Burian, Frantisek Strangmuller
(1960) Radio and TV Packagers Inc.
(1966) New Trends 83 minutes
National Screen Number #66-304
(1967) Childhood Productions 83 minutes
Screenplay: William Cayton
Additional Dialogue: Fred Ladermann (as "Fredd Ladd")
Produced by William Cayton
Directed by Fred Laderman (as "Fredd Ladd")
"Production Reviewed by Dr. Edwin H. Colbert, chairman Dept. of Geology and Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History"
Awhile back, Kevin Butler sent us this fascinating information about JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME on US television:
a review