Cesta do praveku
(1955)

AKA: Journey to the Beginning of Time

Country: Czechoslovakia

Genre: Sci-Fi

Synopsis

In this highly regarded science fiction film by Czech director Karel Zeman (1910-1989), four young boys take a rowboat along a river that enters a cave and then emerges on the other side into a wondrous prehistoric world of dinosaurs, trilobites and woolly mammoths. As they travel down the river, they go further and further back in time, witnessing the forests, swamps and creatures of past geologic ages, eventually reaching the sea and the Silurian epoch.

Notes

• "Cesta do praveku" is Czech for "Journey into prehistory".
• In 1966, a version of this film, dubbed into English, was released in the US, in which the opening and closing scenes were replaced with new footage of four American boys who visit the American Museum of Natural History in New York before entering the prehistoric era as a result of being 'hypnotised' by a wooden figure of a medicine man. In order to preserve some semblance of continuity with the rest of the film, none of the American boys' faces were shown in the scenes in which they appeared! The film was copied to poor quality film stock, edited into short segments for presentation as a serial, and syndicated to various children's television programmes. Fortunately, the original Czech film, with English subtitles, has since been released on DVD in the US; and in 2019 the movie - newly restored - was released by Second Run on both blu-ray and DVD in the UK (Region B/2 formats - Amazon UK links at top right of this page). The Second Run releases include a host of extras, including a feature-length reconstruction of the 1966 US Version.

Reviews and Other Resources

• Watch the Trailer to the Digitally Restored Version on YouTube
• Trailer for 1966 US Version