This one’s for all the O’Brien/Harryhausen-type fans. I’ve heard about Karel Zeman before, but I haven’t really looked into his work until now. This film definitely makes me more interested in his work, but after seeing clips of the other two films I’ve gotten my hands on, I can’t help but see this as more of a primer. Not to say it’s bad, it’s certainly a solid adventure film and a fascinating achievement for its time, and also manages to set itself apart from its contemporaries. However, Zeman would quite clearly take what he learned making this film and take it to new heights later on, leaving this one to seem slightly underwhelming in comparison. Well, enough vagueness, let’s talk about the story.
The film follows a story very similar to Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which a group of adventurers journey into the planet and discover a land of prehistoric beasts (the movie blatantly acknowledges this inspiration). In this case, we have a group of boys, named Petr, Jenda, Tonik, and Jirka, rowing a boat through a cave and upriver, going further back in time the more they travel. They’re mainly doing all this to show Jirka, the youngest, a living trilobite, though they make several stops along the way too. They encounter many different animals along the way, such as a woolly mammoth, woolly rhinos, a sabre-tooth cat, ancient flightless birds, old crocodiles and bison, huge dragonflies, and a copious amount of dinosaurs, including a memorable sequence in which a Stegosaurus fights a T-Rex. They also discover a caveman’s abode, get stuck in a mud pit, get caught in a raging thunderstorm, and nearly get carried away by Pterosaurs. Throughout all this, Jirka often wanders off away from the group, much to the rest’s concern and annoyance, but he always finds a way to make his indiscretions worthwhile. For the most part, though, we’re mainly just following these boys through the many encounters and experiences they have on this journey, all of which are rendered with a variety of film-making techniques, but we’ll get more into that in the next section.
The most striking thing about this film is the multiple methods Zeman used to present the various creatures in the film. Many of them were created using tried-and-true armature stop-motion that was common at the time, like what O’Brien and Harryhausen were doing, and these sequences are very well done, if a tad wonky sometimes (and I must admit that the T-Rex looks more dumpy than ferocious). However, Zeman went the extra mile, incorporating hand puppets/live rigs, animatronics, drawn/cut-out animation, and even a full-sized model of the Stegosaurus. After its fight with the Rex, the Steg had suffered one too many bites to the neck and slowly died overnight. The next day, the boys inspect the body, measuring it and climbing all over its plates. I have to wonder if Spielberg ever saw this movie (given the Triceratops scene in Jurassic Park, I mean). Hand puppets and live rigs were mainly used during water scenes, such as those that feature duck-billed dinosaurs munching on plants. Only their heads are visible above the surface, so there wouldn’t be a need to make anything below the bust line. At around the same time, there’s a scene where the group encounters a Brontosaurus in the water. For this, it seems like they made a rig of a Bronto exterior and fixed it around a boat or raft or something and pushed it along in the water (an uncanny resemblance to old Nessy). Even more interestingly, for the initial meeting of the Bronto, when it’s stationed on a riverbank, Zeman pulled off a composite shot of a matte painting for the body with an animatronic/puppet head and neck. While it wasn’t hard to figure out how it was achieved, the actual integration was impressively seamless. The same goes for the drawn/cut-out bits I mentioned before. I’m not quite sure which technique it is, but during scenes where a herd of animals has to run across the screen (namely, giraffes during the day and horses at night), Zeman seems to use an almost zoetrope-esque repeated animation effect which he projects across the set frame by frame. It looks cool in the day scene but seems almost real at night. While this is probably helped by the darker lighting, which hides some of the blur, it still comes across wonderfully. I will admit that some effects don’t look too convincing now, namely the crocodiles featured in one scene. The way they move and look clearly indicates that they’re puppets, especially when they open their mouths (no gullet, just black rubber). Plus, the film itself might come across as rather uninteresting to some modern audiences, due to its more subdued tone. There isn’t much music in the film, and even when there is, it’s not typically very bombastic. At times, it almost comes across more like a nature walk than anything, though with extinct animals, of course. It’s almost like if O’Brien or Harryhausen did a nature documentary for Disney, or something along those lines. But, honestly, that’s also part of what makes it unique. I can’t think of too many other films that play this sort of “grand journey into the past” in such a generally laid-back way. That, plus the myriad of effects and tricks that even Zeman’s contemporaries weren’t using, makes it stand out amongst the 50’s/60’s adventure film era. I’ll admit, I’m not always super interested in watching films like this now. They can be fun, for sure, but I guess I tend to want other things out of my films beyond just an adventure (though it can depend, sometimes). Still, though, while I didn’t love this film, I did still enjoy what it had to offer, and I found the effect work fascinating. Zeman made a solid first impression with his first live-action hybrid film, and we’re definitely in for some even more interesting work from him soon. You can be sure of that.
So, overall, Journey to the Beginning of Time is a solid and different take on the old adventure films that showed a lot of promise from a visionary talent. I would definitely recommend it for fans of these types of films, and even just those that are interested in the film-making process. I think you’ll find it very enjoyable and remarkably impressive. Now, as with many of the films I feature here, I watched the Criterion release of this film, which was mainly focused on the original Czech version. It does include the American version on the disc, but I haven’t looked into it myself, so I can’t say how similar or different it is. Keep that in mind when you’re searching for this film, there’s more than one version out there. But, however you choose to travel, I hope you enjoy your Journey to the Beginning of Time. Just remember to bring back a trilobite for me.