Quest for Fire

Quest for Fire (1981)

La Guerre du feu

A Science Fantasy Adventure

In the prehistoric world, a Cro-Magnon tribe depends on an ever-burning source of fire, which eventually extinguishes. Lacking the knowledge to start a new fire, the tribe sends three warriors on a quest for more. With the tribe's future at stake, the warriors make their way across a treacherous landscape full of hostile tribes and monstrous beasts. On their journey, they encounter Ika, a woman who has the knowledge they seek.

Date of release
1981-12-16
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (603)
Runtime
1h 40m
Genres
Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
Director
Jean-Jacques Annaud

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: €12.2M
  • Based on: The Quest for Fire
  • Filmed in: Iceland and Kenya
  • Awards: 2 · Nominations: 1. Including: Saturn Award for Best International Film; Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Quest for Fire is a 1981 science fantasy adventure film set in the Paleolithic era, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, written by Gérard Brach and starring Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi and Rae Dawn Chong. The Canadian-French co-production is a film adaptation of the 1911 Belgian novel The Quest for Fire by J.-H. Rosny. The story is set "80,000 years ago", with a plot concerning the struggle for control of fire by early humans and their encounters with different hominid species.

Production

Special language forms were created by novelist Anthony Burgess, while patterns of movement and gesture were developed by anthropologist Desmond Morris. The more advanced language of the Ivaka was largely based on the languages of the Cree and Inuit native peoples of northern Canada, which caused some amusement among those in these communities who saw the film, since the words have little to do with the plot.

The movie was filmed on location in the Scottish Highlands, and in Kenya at Tsavo National Park and Lake Magadi. The opening sequence was filmed at Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada for the forest scenes, whereas the cave home was filmed at Greig's Caves on the Bruce Peninsula along the Niagara Escarpment near Lion's Head, Ontario.

Some scenes involving mammoths were scheduled to be filmed in Iceland, but had to be canceled. Michael D. Moore, the associate producer in charge of action and animal scenes, was training circus elephants for six months to behave like mammoths. When it came time to film in Iceland, strict laws about transporting four-legged animals into the country delayed their arrival. Then a volcano erupted nearby the ranch where they would have been staying.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended