This Time Travel Movie From The '50s Had Groundbreaking Dinosaur Special Effects
by Joe Roberts · /FilmIf you think of groundbreaking dinosaur effects, "Jurassic Park" surely springs to mind. Steven Spielberg's film was revolutionary in its use of CGI, but it was far from the first film to use cutting-edge technology to bring giant reptilian beasts to life. "Jurassic Park" continued the legacy of old-school special effects legend Ray Harryhausen, who became renowned for building on the work of his mentor, Willis H. O'Brien, to develop the "dynamation" technique and create a host of legendary on-screen creatures.
But there is another man whose pioneering special effects work deserves just as much praise: Czech director Karel Zeman. Long before Spielberg had us all transfixed with his CGI T-Rex, Zeman was captivating audiences with his unique blend of animation techniques, which in the 1950s brought a whole world full of prehistoric monsters to life.
1955's "Cesta do pravěku," or "Journey to the Beginning of Time," was a science fiction adventure film that used live action footage and a variety of animation techniques to depict a voyage back to a prehistoric era. It's a prime example of Zeman's animation/live action approach, which has since inspired modern day filmmakers such as Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. The Czech director is widely considered to be a successor to the great Georges Méliès, who, like Zeman, took inspiration from the novels of Jules Verne when creating his wonderfully evocative films, including the world's first robot movie.
Zeman extended Méliès' legacy by combining multiple filmmaking styles to create immersive, spellbinding escapist pictures. These techniques included stop-motion, double exposure, superimposition, and mattes, creating what Michael Atkinson called in a Criterion piece, "an integrated storm of craft that defies dissection."
Journey to the Beginning of Time was a marvel of mixed media filmmaking
Karel Zeman merged filmmaking techniques from the very beginning of his career. 1945's "A Christmas Dream, for example," combined puppetry with live action. But as his career developed, Zeman began expanding his use of styles to realize his fantastical visions. His first feature, 1952's "Poklad ptačího ostrova" or "The Treasure of Bird Island," was unique in the way it used both 2D and 3D animation to bring its Persian fairytale-inspired story to life. Zeman then built on that approach with 1955's "Journey to the Beginning of Time," which helped expose him to much larger audiences when it received a United States release in 1966.
At that time, American audiences were somewhat familiar with Zeman since his "Invention for Destruction" (another movie based on a Jules Verne book) had been given a Stateside release in 1961. But "Journey to the Beginning of Time" was significant for its dinosaur effects, which were, according to Michael Atkinson, the first stop-motion dinosaurs ever presented in color.
As with so many of his projects, Zeman used both 2-D and 3-D models to render the prehistoric creatures in "Journey to the Beginning of Time," which was also notable for using real actors alongside the wide variety of special effects employed by its director. Those actors were Josef Lukáš, Petr Herrmann, Zdeněk Husták, and Vladimír Bejval, who played four schoolboys on a boat trip. The film sees the quartet travel through a cave and emerge in a prehistoric time. As they float down a river, they watch from their boat as various dinosaurs and other creatures of the era emerge, allowing Zeman to create multiple vignettes using his novel mixed-media style.
Journey to the Beginning of Time was a mid-Century Jurassic Park
The paleoart of Zdeněk Burian provided much of the inspiration for Karel Zeman's beguiling adventure into prehistory. But like all his projects, the film is a real medley of design styles and inspirations that was truly innovative for the time. 3D miniatures were used for both the dinosaurs and the schoolboys in places, with Zeman also making use of 2D models as well as larger models of various parts of the creatures' bodies. The film also used voiceover narration to provide information about the dinosaurs it showcased, with Zeman adhering to the available scientific knowledge of the time to provide an educational aspect to his film.
Though it might not be as well-known as other movies featuring larger-than-life monsters, such as the work of the aforementioned Ray Harryhausen, "Journey to the Beginning of Time" struck a chord with audiences that did see it back in the 1950s, and continues to appeal to audiences today. Over on Letterboxd, for example, a viewer who watched the film "decidedly in middle age" claimed to have been "completely overwhelmed by its charm and sincerity." Another wrote, "Watching this film evoked a childlike wonder that reinvigorated my childhood love of dinosaurs." Zeman's legacy lives on.
Not that this is surprising considering how much the legendary creator contributed to the development of filmmaking. His 1958 feature "Invention for Destruction," for example, is widely considered to be one of the first and best steampunk movies of all time. But "Journey to the Beginning of Time" is similarly noteworthy for its wholly unique and inventive use of special effects that brought dinosaurs to life for a generation of viewers 30 years prior to "Jurassic Park."