Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud
Written by Gerard Brach from a book by J.H. Rosny Sr./Anthony Burgess creator of special languages/Desmond Morris creator of body language and gestures
1981/Canada/France
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube (free)
[first lines] Title Card: 80,000 years ago, man’s survival in a vast uncharted land depended on the possession of fire. / For those early humans, fire was an object of great mystery, since no one had mastered its creation. Fire had to be stolen from nature, it had to be kept alive – sheltered from wind and rain, guarded from rival tribes. / Fire was a symbol of power and a means of survival. The tribe who possessed fire, possessed life.
I was mesmerized by this very strange movie.
The film is set in the time of pre-history when Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis co-existed. The population has migrated to a climate with cold winters. Fire is essential to humans for heat, cooking, and to scare away wild animals. We are introduced to a group who disastrously loses its carefully tended fire supply to marauding Neanderthals. Three of its young men are sent out in search of more. They have many harrowing adventures.
The group battles another that has captured women from yet another tribe. One (Rae Dawn Chong) escapes and attaches her self to the men, who eventually accept her. She has a more sophisticated language and leads them back to her little village. In the course of more wandering, fire and romantic love are discovered.
I was a bit nervous going in but I totally loved this. There is no dialogue that we can understand and no subtitles. And way too many things are discovered in a very short period. I’m sure the accuracy could be picked apart in many other ways. But the filmmakers have created a world here and, once one surrenders to it, it is totally engrossing and thought-provoking. Rae Dawn Chong does an amazing job and so do her male counterparts. Recommended.
Quest for Fire won the Academy Award for Best Makeup.
Missing theme song
Your pick is approprate but can I add this to the quest?
Cool! I don’t remember this band.
I love this movie. I have watched it many times, but forgot about it when I did this year.
One of the interesting things about this movie is that it was heavily criticized for being anachronistic, that they have several different technological, cultural and even species levels present within a short distance from each other. Four decades later we now know that this to a wide extent was actually true, that Neanderthal and in some places even Homo Erectus coexisted with Homo Sapiens, that there was interaction, even inter-breeding between them and that there were substantial technological differences. The semi-agrarian culture we see may be a stretch though, but 10.000 years ago this clash between hunter-gatherers and farmers would be commonplace and substantial villages did exist long before actual agriculture.
Quest for Fire was simply ahead of its time.
Also, the comedy of this movie is both unexpected and underappreciated.
I was so surprised and impressed. And you are right about the comedy. Roger Ebert said one of the discoveries was the missionary position.
A one hit wonder but what a wonder, my number one thought when I saw “fire’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crazy_World_of_Arthur_Brown
Your movie to me is probably a child of this 1980 book, I haven’t read it but I do remember it’s monster success, it was everywhere-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clan_of_the_Cave_Bear
I haven’t read that either. But maybe so.