The Story of Fire (1937)

D. Wilhelm Dieterle
B&W


In-between playing Louis Pasteur and Emile Zola, Paul Muni had time to appear in another 'historical' movie playing another 'historical' character. The veracity of this particular history is a lot more up in the air though, as here Muni is - for want of a better phrase – ‘that bloke who invented fire’. Yes, the 1930's favourite go-to actor for big and worthy roles, straps on some animal skins and a fake beard and pretends to be the man who first clocked the notion that if you rub two sticks together you might just get results. This is bizarre notion and one that should be a Eureka moment in a comedy sketch, rather than the basis of a whole movie; so to drag the story out the filmmakers make these particular cavemen the most verbose and articulate troglodytes this side of the Parthenon. As rather than grunting around in the dark, these cave dwellers make speeches with the passion and grace of Aristotle as they determine whether they should harness the destructive power of this new-fangled fire stuff.


We are with the Garl tribe (they may be more advanced than you’d expect your standard man, who’s just this moment evolved from chimps, but they still haven’t got around to pretty names) who are having troubles from a rival tribe called the Theraks. One night in a great storm a lightening-strike is witnessed and a tree bursts into flames. The power of this new phenomenon, which they swiftly call ‘fire’ - thus revealing themselves as the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons – is one desired to help them in their battle against the Theraks. But how to capture it? The young warrior leader takes the problem to their wise man (Muni), the one person likely to be able to work out how to create fire, but also the one most likely to see the ethical and moral dilemmas of doing so.


Basically ‘The Story of Fire’ is an unholy mess. Primitive caveman who are as eloquent and verbose as any faeces and Neanderthal-blood smeared Shakespearian king, trying to decide whether it’s right to harness one of the fundamentals of human existence. It plays like a Mel Brooks or Monty Python sketch that has been stretched to an abnormal length and unaccountably had all the jokes removed. (That’s until the final scene, when Muni stares at something round and brings his hand to his chin to ponder. The same man inventing fire and the wheel, truly he was the Edison of his day). The drama is so ridiculous and artificial and the speeches so over the top and pompous that it keeps you watching with a kind of hypnotic fascination as to how bad it can get. Muni and the other actors try their best, but it’s written on their furry faces that they know they’re beating a dead mammoth.


What I like about this film though is that it actually bloody exists. These were the days when biblical movies were still big business at the box office, so it’s truly fantastic to have this film out there, pushing the envelope and showing that even in the 1930s American cinema was thinking of other origin stories for man – even if the story they came up with was utterly preposterous.