Prehistoric Cave With a Hornet on the Wall

But it took more than 50 years after that first exposure to prehistoric cave art for Mr. Herzog to be able to act on his childhood fascination. In the spring of 2010 he was allowed to film in the Chauvet cave in southeastern France, where archaeologists have found exquisite wall paintings some 32,000 years old, the oldest ever discovered, and the result is an 90-minute documentary called “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

Shot in 3-D, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” which opens in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles on Friday, is, at least in Mr. Herzog’s view, an attempt to address a mystery and offer a glimpse into a world that 21st-century man can never hope to understand. Despite that, he wants the spectator to share the sense of childlike wonder he felt when he saw woolly rhinos, mammoths, bison, lions and horses staring at him from the walls of the Chauvet cave.

“There is a certain strange, palpable power from these images, and it’s not only that the paintings are so accomplished,” Mr. Herzog, 68, said in an interview in New York this month. “There is something that touches us instantaneously, something that is completely awesome. What you are witnessing is the origin of the modern human soul and the beginning of figurative representation.”

“Cave of Forgotten Dreams” was inspired by “First Impressions,” an article written by Judith Thurman for The New Yorker and published in 2008. But she, like the many filmmakers who had also petitioned the French government since Chauvet was discovered in 1994, never got permission to enter the cave and was forced to work from drawings and videos at the site.

Mr. Herzog succeeded where others failed, said Erik Nelson, the film’s producer, by becoming a temporary employee of the French government (for the symbolic payment of 1 euro) and giving France’s Ministry of Culture copies of the raw footage for noncommercial purposes. “I was kind of astounded that Werner got in,” Ms. Thurman said. “Getting permission to film in there was in itself a great feat of cultural diplomacy.”

Even so, the shoot faced a formidable set of restrictions. Mr. Herzog was permitted to work with a crew of only three — he did the lighting himself — and none of the filmmakers could step off the two-foot-wide walkway that runs the length of the cave. As a result, he and the three crew members are visible in some of the scenes.

Because of concerns about toxic carbon dioxide accumulations and exhalations contributing to mold on the cave walls, a problem that has developed in other caves with Paleolithic art, he was also limited to shooting no more than four hours a day over a six-day period. And then there was the challenge of shooting it all in 3-D.

Mr. Herzog said he had fond memories of seeing 3-D films as a child but was initially “a mild skeptic” of the current vogue. Shooting in 3-D “is O.K.,” he said, “when you do ‘Avatar,’ which is Fourth of July fireworks,” but not really suitable for his purposes.

“He thinks it’s a carnival trick,” said Mr. Nelson, who had previously worked with Mr. Herzog on the documentaries “Grizzly Man” and “Encounters at the End of the World,” which was shot in Antarctica. But those misgivings vanished once Mr. Herzog stepped inside Chauvet.

“It became immediately clear that the film should be in 3-D because of the very dramatic interior of the cave,” he recalled. “Not only are there stalactites and stalagmites and columns of crystal cathedrals, but you have a whole drama of formations, of bulges and niches and undulations, and all this was utilized by the painters 32,000 years ago.”

Ms. Thurman said that she had seen “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” twice, at festivals. What particularly impressed her, she said, was the way Mr. Herzog evoked a feeling similar to the one she imagines “the painters themselves, and their audience, whoever they were,” must have felt viewing the paintings by flickering torchlight, which gives the animals portrayed the appearance of both depth and movement.

“I think the 3-D is an essential element, a real stroke of brilliance and imagination, and the slow revelation of the paintings themselves is staggeringly beautiful,” she said.