Le Chaînon Manquant

It's Wednesday, May 25, 196,303 B.C. The wife of the chief of a tribe of morons whom the animal kingdom calls "men" introduces to the world a minimal marmot with three days' growth of beard and mud-colored skin. The tribe greets it with an "Ah!" of admiration as the worthy descendant of their chief.

But she immediately issues a horrified "Oh!" at the birth of his twin brother, a charming pink creature with a strong resemblance to what we now call a baby.

The tribal chief embraces Ah, his heir, to his heart, rejecting with a kick Oh, this freak of nature, to the darkness of the prehistoric wilderness.

Oh's rejection becomes his salvation. Adopted by a brontosaur named Igua, Oh spends his childhood in the fabulous world of prehistory, surrounded by strange and wonderful animals. Igua becomes huge and is totally devoted to his tiny companion whom it nourishes and protects, and to whom it teaches the rudiments language. For all the animals speak a language; only man, at the bottom of the social ladder, doesn't know how to communicate.

For Oh, Igua is a father, a mother and even a toy. Igua is his friend to the end, and it thanks to this faithful brontosaur that Oh's evolution differs from that of his tribe.

Croak, a wild bird, half-pterodactyl and half-crow, is just as interested in Oh. Croak is know-it-all who's seen everything, a jack-of-all-trades, but good-hearted, very different from Igua, but just as attached to Oh as Igua is. This provokes disagreements between the two protectors.

The day arrives when Oh, encouraged by Croak and realizing that he doesn't resembles Igua at all, decides to leave to search for his own family, and to get out and discover the world.

He thus enters a world that's surprising, violent, incomprehensible and sometimes grotesque, a world not yet touched by human hands, where extraordinary creatures coexist.

Because of his curiosity, Oh compromises this balance. He's followed, insulted, hunted, terrorized. But every encounter, every change enriches Oh's knowledge. He becomes, in turn, the first man of science, the first technocrat, the first man.

While on his adventures, Oh discovers the Big Idiots, pink, pear-shaped, joyous beings, invertebrate but always active, surrounded by objects which are round like them.

Ready to befriend them, Oh is equally disposed to help them take advantage of a wheel that they invented.

There are also female felines which resemble cats. These self-sufficient Amazons seduce animals that are bigger and slower than they...in order to pick off the best pieces of meat.

A romance develops between Oh and one of the felines. They decide to flee in order to escape the fury of the feline tribe, which considers everything male to be taboo.

There is also ants which kidnap Oh; Yetis, hairy blondes with a Swedish accents, a dragon, which doesn't happen to breathe fire from the proper orifice; El Gorilla, a monkey that paints like Michelangelo...

Oh is even present, by chance, the moment that Adam and Eve are chased out of Paradise.

Finally, thanks to a flying shark, Oh rediscovers his original tribe. But his father, still allergic to the pink skin color of his rejected offspring, dies of a seizure.

Ah, Oh's twin brother, grown to become a vindictive adult, imposes his rights to the title of chief, and trains his men, bent on conquering all- thanks to the new knowledge that Oh has brought to them.

The world is only fire and destruction, the earth's crust splits, the continents separate and go adrift...

A green spot on the Pacific: this is Easter Island. An old man and an old brontosaur silently contemplate the ocean while their friend the bird stretches to sculpt, for the 93rd time, on a huge rock, with only his beak, the old man's head. It is the head of Oh, the missing link, the one responsible for this immense screw-up.

Oh, Ah, Igua, Croak, Big Idiots, Dragon, Chief, Chief's Wife, Felines, Ants, Yetis, El Gorilla, Adam, Eve, Shark

Production lasted from 1977 until 1979.

Re-released in 1984.

Nominee, Golden Palm, Cannes Film Festival, 1980