Quest for Fire (1981)
(La guerre du feu)
Country: CAN/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 100m
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Rae Dawn Chong
Synopsis:
80,000 years ago, a community of homo sapiens is ambushed by primitives and loses the fire in its keeping. Three males leave in search of a new flame to bring back to their beleaguered remnants, and have adventures with wild beasts, cannibals and a curiously painted tribe of vegetarians.
Review:
Annaud's first film had impeccable credentials - Gérard Brach writing, Desmond Morris and Anthony Burgess advising - and remains a pretty good entry in the subgenre first assayed by Hammer Studios. The animals are ingeniously made up lions and elephants, the acting is a lot better, and there is a subtle attempt to adumbrate man's first tentative steps towards civilized behaviour: the revulsion at the realization that one is eating human remains, the need to curl up in the straw recently occupied by a now departed mate, and not least, the wondrous emotional response at seeing fire conjured from a twirling stick. Landscape changes occur with startling regularity, from the European to the African, but may be a gesture towards acknowledging how things may have been different then.
(La guerre du feu)
Country: CAN/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 100m
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Rae Dawn Chong
Synopsis:
80,000 years ago, a community of homo sapiens is ambushed by primitives and loses the fire in its keeping. Three males leave in search of a new flame to bring back to their beleaguered remnants, and have adventures with wild beasts, cannibals and a curiously painted tribe of vegetarians.
Review:
Annaud's first film had impeccable credentials - Gérard Brach writing, Desmond Morris and Anthony Burgess advising - and remains a pretty good entry in the subgenre first assayed by Hammer Studios. The animals are ingeniously made up lions and elephants, the acting is a lot better, and there is a subtle attempt to adumbrate man's first tentative steps towards civilized behaviour: the revulsion at the realization that one is eating human remains, the need to curl up in the straw recently occupied by a now departed mate, and not least, the wondrous emotional response at seeing fire conjured from a twirling stick. Landscape changes occur with startling regularity, from the European to the African, but may be a gesture towards acknowledging how things may have been different then.
(La guerre du feu)
Country: CAN/FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 100m
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Cast: Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Rae Dawn Chong
Synopsis:
80,000 years ago, a community of homo sapiens is ambushed by primitives and loses the fire in its keeping. Three males leave in search of a new flame to bring back to their beleaguered remnants, and have adventures with wild beasts, cannibals and a curiously painted tribe of vegetarians.
Review:
Annaud's first film had impeccable credentials - Gérard Brach writing, Desmond Morris and Anthony Burgess advising - and remains a pretty good entry in the subgenre first assayed by Hammer Studios. The animals are ingeniously made up lions and elephants, the acting is a lot better, and there is a subtle attempt to adumbrate man's first tentative steps towards civilized behaviour: the revulsion at the realization that one is eating human remains, the need to curl up in the straw recently occupied by a now departed mate, and not least, the wondrous emotional response at seeing fire conjured from a twirling stick. Landscape changes occur with startling regularity, from the European to the African, but may be a gesture towards acknowledging how things may have been different then.