By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
The Tribune

The 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World is being celebrated at the movies.

"1492: Conquest of Paradise" starring Gerard Depardieu sails into theatres Oct. 9. "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" went down with the ship in August.

We'll see "1492" because director Ridley Scott creates visually stunning new worlds in films like "Alien" (1979) and "Blade Runner" (1982).

The best films about explorers use imagery more than dialogue to convey what it feels like to experience something no one else has and to go somewhere first.

So many films have explored variations on this topic that we had to set limits.

It wasn't enough to be a "stranger in a strange land," a modern immigrant seeking a better life or a survivor adapting to a new environment or difficult circumstances.

That eliminated such notable films as: "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1952), "Lord of the Flies" (1963), "Walkabout" (1971), "Deliverance" (1972), "Apocalypse Now" (1979), "The Killing Fields" (1984) and "Journey of Hope" (1990).

Simply living on the frontier wasn't enough, eliminating most Westerns and science-fiction films, including "Forbidden Planet" (1956) and "The Last of the Mohicans" (1992).

Instead, characters had to deliberately set out to discover a new world or pioneer a new idea. Like the Starship Enterprise, they had "to boldly go where no one has gone before," to pursue what Antarctic explorer Admiral Robert Scott called "the fascination of making the first footsteps."

Despite those restrictions, our list of films to see includes biographies, historical epics, modern adventures, documentaries and a little science.

"The Race for the Double Helix" builds drama and excitement around rival researchers, including a woman, using different scientific approaches to uncover the secret of DNA.

Most films about explorers are dominated by men: conquerors, adventurers, mercernaries, missionaries or visionaries.

That certainly is true of "Cabeza de Vaca," a 1992 Mexican film about a conquistador shipwrecked in 1528. Based on a true story, he spends eight years walking from Florida to the Pacific, becoming a respected "shaman" among the natives.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog shows the negative side in "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" (1972) starring Klaus Kinski. Filmed in Peruvian jungles, the eerie, offbeat story follows a small band of Pizarro's men drifting downriver in search of the fabled treasure of El Dorado.

Led by mad, ambitious Aguirre, the doomed expedition is swallowed by the wilderness, attacked by silent, unseen enemies until Aguirre stands alone commanding an army of spider monkeys.

"Aguirre" features a spellbinding performance by the late Kinski, who also starred in Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" (1982) about a 19th century visionary who carries a boat over a mountain in order to bring Grand Opera to the same region.

Herzog tells his story visually, forshadowing the fall from grace to Hell by beginning the film with tiny looking men passing through clouds on their descent down a steep mountain trail from the top of the Andes to the jungle below.

The untamed land also dominates "Black Robe" (1991) by Australian director Bruce Beresford ("Breaker Morant" and "Driving Miss Daisy.")."

In the film, Algonquin Indians guide a French missionary (Lothaire Bluteau) in 1634 through 1,500 miles of rugged Quebec wilderness to show the Huron Indians "the way to Paradise."

"Black Robe" resembles "Dances with Wolves" (1990), sympathetically portraying native Americans and foreshadowing their inevitable destruction, but it's more realistic about the distances separating the two cultures.

The priest believes reading leads to enlightenment, the forest is ruled by the Devil, and the cross leads to salvation. Algonquins see reading as demonic, live in the forest, and worry about the cross stealing their souls.

Filmed entirely on location, the silent spectacle of men in canoes on a river dwarfed by forests and mountains continually reinforces the priest's isolation and uncertain future.

The land shaped many explorers and the films about them, especially "Scott of the Antarctica" (1948), a vivid look at the British explorer's struggle to reach the South Pole first.

As powerful and gripping as anything made today, the film looks absolutely convincing. The audience feels chilled, watching dogged men haul sleds across barren glaciers, huddle in tents against unrelenting wind and snowstorms and endure an environment so unforgiving that a minor cut jeopardizes their mission.

The environment awaiting the first American astronauts was more unknown than hostile.

In "The Right Stuff" (1983), Director Philip Kaufman's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's best-seller, the real hero is test pilot Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) who doesn't qualify to reach the stars but whose willingness to "push the edge of the envelope" sets the standard for those who do.

Conquering space has captured the imagination of filmmakers since the dawn of movies, when "A Trip to the Moon" took off in 1902. The pinnacle remains "2001: A Space Odyssey," Stanley Kubrick's 1968 classic tracing the evolution of man from the dawn of thought to metaphysical rebirth as a "star child."

Harnessing "the energy of the stars" is the challenge in "The Day After Trinity" (1985), an excellent documentary about J. Robert Oppenheimer building the atomic bomb and its consequences for him and our world.

Using interviews, newsreels, photographs, letters and diary excerpts, the film conveys the sense of urgency and excitement surrounding the project and the scientists' thrill, horror and regret at their eventual success in Los Alamos.

Oppenheimer, like so many before him, was powerless to prevent his discovery from being exploited. He joins a long line of explorers who, for better or worse, paved the way to a future that forever changed the ground they walked first.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. Both are Trekkies at heart, if not in deed.

• Captain from Castille (1947)
• Christopher Columbus (1949)
• Plymouth Adventure (1952)
• Seven Cities of Gold (1955)
• The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969)

• Northwest Passage (1940)
• Wagon Master (1950)
• How the West Was Won (1962)
• The Emmigrants (1971) / The New Land (1972)
• Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
• Heartland (1979)

• Trader Horn (1931)
• Stanley and Livingston (1939)
• The Search for the Nile (PBS/BBC series, 1970s)
• Quest for Fire (1983)
• Gorillas in the Mist (1987)
• Mountains of the Moon (1990)

• The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
• Kon-Tiki (1951) / The Ra Expedition (1971)
• Conquest of Everest (1953)
• Dersu Uzala (1975)
• Shogun (1980)
• We of the Never Never (1983)

• Nanook of the North (1922)
• With Byrd at the South Pole (1930)
• The Red Tent (1971)
• Never Cry Wolf (1983)

• The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)
• Edison, the Man (1940)
• Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940)
• Madame Curie (1943)
• Breaking the Sound Barrier (1952)
• The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)
• World Without Sun (1964)
• Countdown (1968)
• The Darwin Adventure (1972)
• Amelia Earhart (1976)
• A Brief History of Time (1992)

• Destination Moon (1950)
• The Time Machine (1960)
• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
• Altered States (1980)
• The Abyss (1989)