{"id":13480,"date":"2026-11-10T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=13480"},"modified":"2026-11-04T15:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T15:41:18","slug":"an-extraordinary-collection-of-cinematic-curiosities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/an-extraordinary-collection-of-cinematic-curiosities\/","title":{"rendered":"An Extraordinary Collection of Cinematic Curiosities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>15 Minute, 47 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nFantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Surrealist Drama
\nYears Released: <\/strong>1930–1996, 2026 Blu-ray set
\nTotal Runtime: <\/strong>10h 7m (607 minutes)
\nDirectors: <\/strong>Charles Vanel, Marcel L'Herbier, Edmond T. Gréville, Jean Kerchbron, Juan Luis Buñuel, Raúl Ruiz
\nWriters: <\/strong>Various, including Marcel L'Herbier, Louis Chavance, Edmond T. Gréville, and Raúl Ruiz; adaptations from works by Gustav Meyrink and others
\nCast: <\/strong>Charles Vanel, Sandra Milovanoff, Fernand Gravey, Micheline Presle, Héléna Bossis, Jean Chevrier, André Reybaz, Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey, Marcello Mastroianni, Chiara Mastroianni
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available now; order your copy here: www.radiancefilms.co.uk<\/a>, www.mvdshop.com<\/a>, or www.amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>What does it take to get me interested in a six-film collection before I've even read the titles? Apparently, putting Catherine Deneuve on the cover will do it. She's one of my favorite actors of all time, and I recognized her face immediately when I saw Radiance Films' FANTASTIQUE: THE DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES OF FRENCH CINEMA. I didn't have to study the artwork or squint at the credits. I knew exactly who I was looking at. That's a wonderful way to discover a box set, especially one that covers sixty-six years of French filmmaking and some very unusual corners of its history. Deneuve was my immediate point of connection, but the real pleasure here is how much further the collection travels beyond that familiar face.<\/p>\n

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There's also something fitting about finding an actor I adore on the front of a release dedicated to the strange and unexpected. Deneuve has never been limited to conventional parts, and her work with filmmakers willing to challenge straightforward storytelling is part of what makes her such an enduring presence. The film included here, THE WOMAN WITH RED BOOTS, comes from Juan Luis Buñuel, son of Luis Buñuel, whose own collaborations with Deneuve include BELLE DE JOUR and TRISTANA. That connection offers a natural way into this collection, though Radiance is doing much more than assembling recognizable names. It's asking viewers to consider a side of French cinema that tends to get overshadowed by the movements and directors most frequently discussed in film history.<\/p>\n

The word fantastique is useful precisely because the six selections don't belong comfortably to one genre. This isn't six variations on a monster story, nor is it a chronological survey of traditional horror. Fantastique lets the unexplainable enter a seemingly recognizable world without requiring everyone to stop and explain it. Dreams can bleed into waking life. Desire can become a kind of trap. Identity can shift so dramatically that even the person experiencing it struggles to understand what has happened. The films differ enormously in period, presentation, and temperament, but that broad organizing idea lets them sit beside one another without pretending they're interchangeable.<\/p>\n

DANS LA NUIT takes us back to 1930 and to Charles Vanel, an actor familiar from films such as THE WAGES OF FEAR and ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES. His only feature as director starts with a newly married quarry worker whose life changes after an accident leaves him disfigured. The mask he wears afterward becomes more than a practical covering; it affects how others see him and how his marriage can function. The unsettling premise makes a strong case for including this film in a collection about the fantastic even though its foundation is recognizably human. Fear doesn't have to arrive through a creature or a supernatural event. Sometimes a change in appearance is enough to make a familiar life feel hostile.<\/p>\n

The timing of DANS LA NUIT matters almost as much as its premise. It arrived as sound cinema was overtaking silent filmmaking, a moment that could consign an ambitious late silent picture to neglect regardless of its individual qualities. Vanel's project belongs to that transitional period, and the film's visual storytelling gives the collection an especially interesting starting point. The marriage, the working environment, and the masked figure all invite attention to the relationship between physical images and emotional meaning. It also prevents this set from opening with the assumption that the French fantastic began when fantasy acquired more elaborate technical possibilities. The imagination was already there.<\/p>\n

LA NUIT FANTASTIQUE moves the emphasis from distress to enchantment. Marcel L'Herbier's 1942 film follows Denis, a philosophy student working overnight at a Paris food market, who repeatedly dreams about Irène, a woman in white played by Micheline Presle. Sleep deprivation provides a delightfully simple doorway into a far less dependable reality. His pursuit of this mysterious woman brings complications that make ordinary logic a poor guide, and Fernand Gravey's Denis is caught between the responsibilities of everyday life and the seductive freedom of dreams. It's a very different proposition from Vanel's masked tragedy, which is exactly why its placement in the collection works.<\/p>\n

The circumstances surrounding LA NUIT FANTASTIQUE also deserve more than a passing mention. It was written during the German occupation of France, when escape through art carried particular weight. That historical fact doesn't mean every fanciful decision should be translated into a political statement. It does add meaning to a story that leaves an exhausted worker's ordinary existence behind for a Paris governed by romantic impossibility. The film's interest in dream imagery connects older traditions of screen illusion to the specific conditions under which L'Herbier was working. An escapist comedy can still reveal a great deal about the world in which it was produced.<\/p>\n

The collection turns more oppressive with Edmond T. Gréville's LE DIABLE SOUFFLE. Charles Vanel returns, this time playing Laurent, who brings the ailing Louvaine to his isolated island near the Spanish border. The arrival of another man, Diégo, threatens the arrangement they have established. Here, the environment matters to the storytelling in a way that's quite distinct from the city streets and dream spaces of the preceding films. The persistent Tramontana wind becomes a natural counterpart to the emotions building among the characters. Instead of transporting people out of reality, the fantastic seems capable of emerging from a place where ordinary human tensions have nowhere convenient to go.<\/p>\n

Henri Alekan's cinematography supplies another important connection to the broader history of French screen fantasy. His credits include Jean Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, making his involvement especially appropriate for a collection concerned with the boundary between tangible surroundings and extraordinary experience. Yet LE DIABLE SOUFFLE isn't simply valuable because of the people who made it. The premise offers a more grounded form of the uncanny, one driven by isolation, jealousy, vulnerability, and an unforgiving setting. Beside LA NUIT FANTASTIQUE, it shows how little a fantastique film needs to share with its neighbor beyond a willingness to let familiar experience become unstable.<\/p>\n

Jean Kerchbron's THE GOLEM, a 1967 television adaptation of Gustav Meyrink's novel, adds a different historical tradition. An unnamed man mistakenly takes another person's hat and begins experiencing the life of Athanase Pernath, a figure associated with Prague's Jewish quarter. The story draws from Meyrink's novel and the much older legend of the Golem, although the adaptation shouldn't be reduced to a conventional monster picture. The mystery of personality, memory, and identity is more central to understanding why it belongs here. Even the apparent simplicity of the mistaken hat is striking. One small accident opens the possibility that a person's identity isn't nearly as secure as it seems.<\/p>\n

Including a television production also broadens what deserves preservation. A collection like this could easily have restricted itself to theatrical features, treating other formats as secondary. THE GOLEM instead demonstrates how the fantastic could operate within television's own production history. A worthwhile connection exists between its older literary sources and the medium through which this version reached audiences. It also bridges the collection's earlier black-and-white cinema and the increasingly self-conscious investigations of perception in the two later films. That progression isn't an argument that each decade improved on the last. It's a reminder that artists keep finding new ways to trouble the same basic questions.<\/p>\n

And then there's Catherine Deneuve. Yes, I'm returning to her, because in this case it would be ridiculous to pretend she's just another name on the cast list. THE WOMAN WITH RED BOOTS, directed by Juan Luis Buñuel in 1974, gives her the role of Françoise, a novelist whose influence over other people's perceptions is difficult to pin down. Fernando Rey plays Pérou, a wealthy art patron who takes an intrusive interest in her, and the resulting arrangement brings creative power into uncomfortable contact with possession and control. Deneuve's presence is an especially apt choice for a story about the difficulty of separating the real person from the image someone else has constructed.<\/p>\n

Part of my affection for Deneuve comes from her ability to belong convincingly to movies that refuse to behave as expected. Her association with the elder Buñuel makes this appearance with his son an intriguing piece of film history, but it shouldn't obscure what THE WOMAN WITH RED BOOTS is doing on its own terms. Françoise is a writer, which means that imagination isn't simply something happening around her. It's inseparable from the authority she may hold over the people she encounters. The film's interest in manipulation and uncertain perceptions gives the collection one of its clearest links between art itself and the fantastic. Even the question of whether something extraordinary has occurred becomes entangled with who is telling the story and who has the power to make others believe it.<\/p>\n

The Deneuve connection continues into the supplements, where an archival interview with her offers a particularly welcome addition. For me, that matters far more than a generic claim that a release is packed with bonus features. I was already excited to see her on the cover, and having material connected directly to her participation gives that initial attraction a meaningful payoff. The edition also includes a visual essay by Samm Deighan and a discussion of costume with Matteo Augello, sensible choices for a film where the representation of a woman and the significance of an image are hardly incidental concerns. These are the sorts of extras that can expand a viewer's understanding of why a film is included, not merely occupy space on a menu.<\/p>\n

Raúl Ruiz's THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH closes the selection in 1996 with Marcello Mastroianni moving through four interconnected stories. His characters include a man claiming that fairies consumed years of his life, a professor who leaves his career behind, and a mysterious butler attached to an inherited house. The episodes make ordinary explanations feel increasingly inadequate. The concept is less about presenting a puzzle with a neatly announced solution than about watching identities and experiences refuse to stay separate. It also gives the collection a final chance to explore the fantastic through the personality of an internationally recognizable star without reducing the film to that star's reputation.<\/p>\n

There's an added poignancy to Mastroianni's presence because THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH appeared in the final year of his life. The collection includes an archival interview with him and his daughter, Chiara Mastroianni, offering another valuable human connection to a film whose fiction is preoccupied with the strange elasticity of a lifetime. Ruiz, a Chilean filmmaker who worked extensively in France, also complicates any narrow idea of what French cinema should mean. This collection isn't arguing for a sealed national tradition. Its final selection demonstrates how French filmmaking has absorbed different backgrounds and imaginations, an especially important point for a box devoted to work that resists easy categorization.<\/p>\n

Radiance deserves credit for the project's scale. The six films are spread across six Blu-ray discs, with restorations identified by the label as 4K for the first five titles and 2K for THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH. That distinction matters, particularly because some retailer descriptions incorrectly group all six under 4K restoration. The collection also provides improved English subtitle translations, and THE WOMAN WITH RED BOOTS includes French, Italian, and English audio options. None of those details replace engagement with the films. Careful documentation is an important part of making an unfamiliar international collection accessible to viewers who might otherwise never encounter these works.<\/p>\n

The supplemental program reaches beyond its best-known performers. Film historian Pamela Hutchinson contributes a commentary on DANS LA NUIT, while Ginette Vincendeau discusses LA NUIT FANTASTIQUE in the context of Occupation-era French cinema. Elena and Manuela Lazic provide a commentary for LE DIABLE SOUFFLE, and Kim Newman addresses the literary foundations of THE GOLEM. Adrian Martin contributes a commentary for Ruiz's concluding film. A documentary featuring filmmakers including Lucile Had\u017eihalilovi\u0107, Bertrand Mandico, and Yann Gonzalez then connects these older examples to contemporary fantastique cinema. It's a smart way to establish that the collection's subject isn't merely a vanished curiosity.<\/p>\n

The physical edition also includes a substantial archival component. Its limited run of 5,000 copies includes a 120-page book featuring contemporary scholarship and historical writing, along with reversible sleeves using original imagery and newly commissioned designs by Time Tomorrow. The rigid box and individual cases make this feel like a curated collection rather than six unrelated discs sold together. I don't need every release to be extravagant, but the accompanying writing is especially appropriate here. These movies span dramatically different periods and production circumstances, and a thoughtful book can help make those differences easier to appreciate without flattening them into one tidy movement.<\/p>\n

It's also worth recognizing the decisions behind the selection. A box spanning 1930 through 1996 could never present a complete history of French fantasy and horror, and six films obviously can't account for every important filmmaker or direction the genre followed. The value of this approach lies in choosing works that challenge expectations of what such a collection should include. It begins with a silent-era domestic nightmare, moves through wartime dream comedy and isolated psychological tension, makes space for literary television, then reaches Deneuve and Mastroianni in films concerned with reality's instability. Those aren't identical attractions. They're six different reasons to reconsider the borders we tend to draw around genre cinema.<\/p>\n

I came to FANTASTIQUE: THE DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES OF FRENCH CINEMA through the simplest possible connection. I saw Catherine Deneuve's face and immediately paid attention. I love that an actor who's meant so much to my appreciation of movies can still point me toward unfamiliar filmmaking history. Radiance takes that initial curiosity and gives it somewhere worthwhile to go, assembling a collection that doesn't insist French cinema's stranger side has to look or behave in any single way. And I have to admit, there's something perfectly appropriate about a box devoted to mysterious encounters beginning, for me, with one face I could never mistake for anyone else's.<\/p>\n

Bonus Materials:<\/strong>
\n4K restorations of Dans la nuit, La nuit fantastique, Le Diable souffle, The Golem, The Woman with Red Boots and Three Lives and Only One Death presented on six discs
\nUncompressed mono PCM audio for each film
\nNew introduction to Dans la nuit by Institut Lumière director Thierry Frémaux
\nNew commentary on Dans la nuit by film historian Pamela Hutchinson
\nNew interview with French cinema expert Ginette Vincendeau on La Nuit fantastique and French cinema under the Occupation
\nArchival TV interview with director Marcel L’Herbier on La Nuit fantastique
\nNew commentary for Le Diable souffle by film critics Elena and Manuela Lazic
\nNew interview on Le Diable souffle and director Edmond T. Gréville with film critic David Thompson
\nNew interview with Kim Newman on The Golem and Gustav Meyrink’s novel
\nArchival TV introduction to The Golem by journalist and writer Louis Pauwels
\nThe Golem photo gallery
\nFrench, Italian, and English audio options for The Woman with Red Boots
\nNew interview with fashion expert Matteo Augello on The Woman with Red Boots
\nNew visual essay on The Woman with Red Boots by critic and author Samm Deighan
\nArchival interview with Catherine Deneuve on The Woman with Red Boots
\nNew commentary on Three Lives and Only One Death by Adrian Martin
\nArchival TV interview with Marcello and Chiara Mastroianni on Three Lives and Only One Death
\nNew documentary on the French cinéma fantastique then and now, featuring directors Lucile Had\u017eihalilovi\u0107, Bertrand Mandico, Yann Gonzalez, and more to be confirmed
\nNewly improved English subtitle translation for each film
\nReversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
\nLimited edition 120-page book featuring new writing by Virgine Sélavy and David Cairns, as well as archival writing by Tzetan Todorov, André Bazin, Henri Alekan and more
\nLimited Edition of 5,000 copies presented in a rigid box with full-height Scanavo cases for each film and a removable OBI strip, leaving packaging free of certificates and markings<\/p>\n

Please visit https:\/\/linktr.ee\/overlyhonestr for more reviews.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of RADIANCE FILMS, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEW Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema  –      Genre: Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Surrealist Drama Years Released: 1930–1996, 2026 Blu-ray set Total Runtime: 10h 7m (607 minutes) Directors: Charles Vanel, Marcel L'Herbier, Edmond T. Gréville, Jean Kerchbron, Juan Luis Buñuel, Raúl Ruiz Writers: Various, including Marcel L'Herbier, Louis Chavance, Edmond T. Gréville, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0368\/0368025.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t