Werner Herzog remembers being 12 years old when he saw a picture of a horse on the cover of a book about Paleolithic art . Ever since, even when he was directing films like “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Nosferatu,” that image has “haunted my mind,” he said.

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 a 90-minute documentary called “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

“Cave of Forgotten Dreams ” opens April 29 in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles and has already been screened at festivals in Germany, Britain, Hong Kong and Argentina. Shot in 3-D, it is, at least in Mr. Herzog’s view, an attempt to address a mystery and offer a glimpse into a world that 21stcentury humans can never hope to understand. He wants the spectator to share the 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,” said Mr. Herzog, 68 . “ 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.

Even so, the shoot faced formidable 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 one-half-meter-wide walkway that runs the length of the cave. As a result, he and the 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 six days.

“It became immediately clear that the film should be in 3-D because of the very dramatic interior of the cave,” Mr. Herzog 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. Ms. Thurman points to “tangents” in the film, like a section in which Mr. Herzog speculates about how albino crocodiles might perceive the cave . “ It’s not a straight documentary,” she said.

“That strangeness is his signature, his handprint,” like the one Mr. Herzog shows on a wall of the cave. Mr. Herzog openly mocks the cinema verite school of documentary filmmaking. “I insist that even if you make documentaries, we are filmmakers, and we must never be flies on the wall, unobtrusive and just registering,” he said. “As filmmakers we should be the hornets that go out and sting.”

It is hard to escape the notion of a majestic historical symmetry infusing “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” It’s been eons since paintings first began to grace the walls of Chauvet, and there’s no telling when another visual artist will be allowed in again.


By LARRY ROHTER
“Werner is the first artist to muck about in that cave in 30,000 years,” Mr. Nelson said. “Just think of it: This is the first time someone has created art in that cave since the original painters.”