Journey to the Beginning of Time

Journey to the Beginning of Time (Czech: Cesta do pravěku, literally "Journey into prehistory") is a color 1955 Czechoslovak science fiction adventure film directed by Karel Zeman. Produced using a combination of 2-D and 3-D models, it was the first of Zeman's productions to include actors in conjunction with stop-motion and special effects. It won awards at the International Film Festivals of Venice and Mannheim. The documentary-type nature of the film showing extinct animal species behaving naturally in their own environments was most unusual for its era and foreshadowed many later TV productions that would depict prehistoric life for educational rather than purely entertainment purposes. Cesta do pravěku should not be confused with a dubbed and partly re-filmed US version of the film that was released in 1966 under the title Journey to the Beginning of Time. The film is, according to server Kinobox, the best Czech science fiction film of all time.[1] The film was a great success abroad, especially in East Germany, USA and Japan. In New York alone, it was screened in 96 cinemas at a time. No Czech movie has managed to do this before or after. Steven Spielberg also mentioned the picture, saying that its quality is incredible given the time it was created. In his Jurassic Park, we can also see a very similar scene where examining the sick dinosaur was intended to get protagonists as close as possible to the lizard.[2]