Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema

Though rarely thought of as a home for genre filmmaking, France has fostered a long lineage of films at the border between realism and fantasy. Broadly gathered under the term of Cinéma Fantastique, these works often find the magical and the surreal lurking in the ordinary. Uncanny dreams, fleeting visions, or eerie apparitions lift their protagonists out of the everyday, transporting viewers into atmospheric worlds where the usual rules structuring our reality do not always hold. Formally striking and thematically stimulating, these phantasmagorical films blur the boundary between horror and wonder as they place the mysterious and the unexplained centre-stage. Dans la nuit (Charles Vanel, 1930) moves from joy to terror as a disfigured miner starts to wear a strange mask. In Marcel L'Herbier's La nuit fantastique (1942), a student follows a woman in his dreams. In Edmond T. Greville's Le diable souffle (1947), stormy weather and feverish longing threaten to drive everyone mad. A man lives the life of another in Jean Kerchbron's The Golem (1967). In Juan Luis Bunuel's The Woman in Red Boots (1974) Catherine Deneuve appears to control people with her mind and finally in Raul Ruiz's Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) Marcello Mastroianni stars in four bizarre, intertwining stories.

Special Features

Commentary: 'Dans la nuit': Pamela Hutchinson (film historian); 'Le Diable souffle': Elena and Manuela Lazic (film critics); 'Three Lives and Only One Death': Adrian Martin, Documentaries: Documentary on the French cinéma fantastique then and now, Image Gallery, Interviews: Ginette Vincendeau (French cinema expert); Marcel L'Herbier (director); David Thompson (film critic); Kim Newman; Matteo Augello (fashion expert); Catherine Deneuve (actor); Marcello and Chiara Mastroianni, Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow; Introduction to 'Dans la nuit' by Thierry Frémaux (Institut Lumière director); TV introduction to 'The Golem' by Louis Pauwels (journalist/writer); Visual essay on 'The Woman With Red Boots' by Samm Deighan (critic/author)

Audio Languages: French, French, Italian, English

Duration: 607 minutes

Number of Discs: 6

Subtitle Languages: English

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