PREHISTORIC PEOPLE IN FILM
The course involves an examination of the depiction of prehistoric people in film. The metaphoric uses of prehistoric societies psychologically and socially are discussed.
1 hour 1 credit
Rationale
Prehistoric people have been depicted in films from early silent films until the present. These films depict these peoples both in the times in which they ostensibly lived as well as transporting them into modern day situations.
In order to depict prehistoric people it is generally necessary to create the time period in which they live and to endow them with specific kinds of personalities. This means that the film’s creators need to create at least one language and culture for the film, and often more than that since in many films people from one “tribe” meet people from other “tribes” whose languages and cultures differ from their own.
While remarkable anachronisms often occur in these films (with prehistoric people encountering dinosaurs and the like), it is the symbolic use of prehistoric people in films is examined as both a social and psychological extension of primitivism and often id like drives that is of interest.
The course will examine five films in which prehistoric people appear and the meanings which are ascribed to them by the film makers.
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Requirements for the Course
Packet of readings
SHORT LIST OF FILMS
Films with Prehistoric People in Their Own Time
One Million B.C. (1940) Hal Roach, dir.
Films with Prehistoric People Brought into Modern Times
Trog (1970) Freddie Francis, dir.
Films with Sequences with Prehistoric People
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick, dir.
Final Exam
Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) Michael Chapman, dir.
Caveman (1981) Carl Gottlieb, dir.
Teen Age Caveman (1958) Roger Corman, dir.
La Guerre du Feu (Quest for Fire)1981 Jean-Jacques Annaud, dir.
Man’s Genesis 1912 D.W. Griffith, dir.
Iceman (1984) Fred Scheprin, dir.
Encino Man (1992)Les Mayfield, dir.
Altered States (1980) Ken Russell, dir
The People Time Forgot 1977 Kevin Conner, dir.
At the Earth’s Core 1976 Kevin Connor, dir
The Land that Time Forgot 1975 Kevin Connor, dir.
Cavegirl (1985) David Oliver, dir.
Eegah (1962) Arch Hall Sr. dir.
Prehistoric Women (1950) George C. Tallas, dir.
Valley of the Dragons (1961) Edward Bernds, dir.
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
Return of the Ape Man (1944) Phil Rosen, dir.
Being Human (1993) Bill Forsyth dir.
Three Ages (1923) Buster Keaton, dir.