Three Fantastic Journeys by Karel Zeman (Criterion Collection) [DVD]

I first encountered Karel Zeman in the 1960s when the dubbed American version of INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION known as THE FABULOUS WORLD OF JULES VERNE with an introduction by Hugh Downs aired on my local TV station. I had never seen anything like it. This is shortly before I discovered the illustrations of Gustave Dore' on which the look of the movie is based and years before I encountered the short fantasy films of George Melies which had been one of Zeman's influences. I had completely forgotten about him (in fact I didn't even know who he was) until in the late 1990s I came across a cheap, generic label VHS copy of JULES VERNE which immediately took me back to when I first saw it.For years I kept waiting for a DVD version of the film to be released but it seemed as if it never would appear. Finally in 2020 Criterion released this DVD/Blu-Ray combination and I finally saw my chance and immediately purchased it. Although it was pricey, I didn't mind because Criterion always does quality work and I wound up getting not one but three movies and a plethora of extras. The other two movies, JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME and THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN, I had heard of but had never seen. Now after having viewed all three in absolutely stunning restorations, MUNCHAUSEN is clearly my favorite. This because, in addition to its incredible use of multi-media techniques (live action, puppetry, stop motion animation, specialty sets), the use of color is positively psychedelic before there was such a thing.INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION (1958) is like a series of 19th century engravings come to life with numerous references to several of Jules Verne's best known novels seamlessly blended into the story the movie is telling. It uses many of the same techniques employed in MUNCHAUSEN (1962) but without the stunning color palette of that film. JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME (1955) is fondly remembered by many Amazon reviewers in the 1960 dubbed version that they saw in cinemas as children. The story of 4 boys who set out to discover pre-history is both a scientific exploration and a childhood fantasy. All 3 movies are taken from original sources and are in Czech with subtitles. The English dubbed versions of JOURNEY and INVENTION are included.As I mentioned earlier, this set comes with a plethora of extras including several of Zeman's early short films and a thorough biography of the filmmaker that includes interviews with Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam. It is the latter who was clearly the most influenced as most of his MONTY PYTHON animations look as if they could have been done by Zeman and Gilliam would later direct a live action version of BARON MUNCHAUSEN in 1989. For me the most fascinating extra was a short of young Czech film students duplicating scenes from Zeman's movies the way he made them without using modern CGI technology. They started out skeptical and ended up being enthralled. That is the ultimate testimonial to the genius of Karel Zeman.