Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema Blu-ray Boxset

'Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema' (1930-1996) Radiance Limited Edition 6-Disc Blu-ray Boxset | 6 films | Region A+B | French w/ English subtitles

Though rarely thought of as a home for genre filmmaking, France has fostered a long lineage of films treading the line between realism and fantasy. Broadly gathered under the term 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 appear to hold. Formally striking and thematically stimulating, these phantasmagorical films blur the boundary between horror and wonder as they weave beguiling tales around the mysterious and the unexplained. 

Dans la Nuit (Charles Vanel, 1930) 4K restoration
Shortly after his wedding, a quarry worker is disfigured in a mining accident. The mask now covering his face is scarier than the scars underneath it… and his bride is soon tempted by the promise of happier days with another man.
The sole feature film directed by legendary French actor Charles Vanel (The Wages of Fear) is a viscerally affecting story of love and happiness, terror and guilt, with stunning cinematography and breathtakingly creative editing capturing the surreal atmosphere of life in the mines as well as the dizzying joy of romance. 

La Nuit fantastique (Marcel L'Herbier, 1942) 4K restoration
A philosophy student makes ends meet by working nights at a fresh food market. Perpetually exhausted, he often falls asleep and dreams of a beautiful woman dressed in white. One night, he follows her on a peculiar adventure across Paris…
One of the most successful French films made during the German occupation of France, Marcel L’Herbier’s lighthearted comedy uses ethereal set design, witty dialogue, and a charismatic cast to gracefully skip from one charmingly implausible moment to the next. 

Le Diable souffle (Edmond T. Gréville, 1947) 4K restoration
One rainy night in the city, a man meets a sickly and despairing young woman. He brings her back to his small island near the Spanish border, where the Tramontana wind always blows. One stormy night a mysterious drifter finds refuge on the island, disturbing the pair's harmonious routine.
Emotions are high and imaginations run wild in this moody story of unrequited love, broken dreams, and frustrated desires. The atmospheric cinematography by Henri Alekan (Beauty and the Beast, Wings of Desire) captures all the hallucinogenic power of the film’s unusual setting, an isolated place battered by winds and rain when it isn’t bathed in idyllic sunshine. 

The Golem (Jean Kerchbron, 1967) 4K restoration
After he mistakenly swaps his hat with a stranger, an unnamed man appears to start living the stranger’s life in his dreams. Now a jewel cutter and book restorer in the Prague ghetto, he finds himself embroiled in his neighbors' sordid stories of passion, jealousy, and revenge, while rumors spread that an ominous clay figure known as the Golem has reappeared after 33 years.
Jean Kerchbron’s TV adaptation of Gustav Meyrink’s novel, itself inspired by the Jewish folktale of the Golem, seems like an emanation from another time and place. Mystical dialogue, arresting set design, and a panoply of striking faces combine in a hypnotic, metaphysical tale that appears to abide by old rules and ancient wisdom. 

The Woman with Red Boots (Juan Luis Buñuel, 1974) 4K restoration
After Françoise, a successful novelist, meets a rich art patron, he begins to stalk her. Soon, he invites her to write her memoir at his country house. But he also invites the director of an art magazine whom Françoise has become obsessed with.
Juan Luis Buñuel takes after his father in this unpredictable allegory on art’s power to control us and warp our perceptions. The multi-layered game of cat and mouse makes canny use of Catherine Deneuve’s on-screen persona as both an unreachable ideal and a sensual, flesh-and-blood woman: Françoise is an artist who, through her creative imagination and the grip she has on men’s psyche, can make them see things that may or may not be there. 

Three Lives and Only One Death (Raúl Ruiz, 1996) 2K restoration
In the first of four intertwining tales, Marcello Mastroianni (8 ½) plays an affable man who tells a stranger about the time fairies devoured years of his life. In the second, he is a Professor who abandons his job to become a beggar. In the third, he is the eccentric butler that comes with the large chateau a young couple unexpectedly inherits. And in the fourth, he is a businessman who learns that the family he invented to get out of work obligations is arriving from the airport.
Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz tells four strange yet eerily familiar, fable-like stories set in Paris, where he lived and worked for much of his life. Mastroianni’s twinkle-eyed charm carries us through an offbeat journey through time and destiny, made up of odd coincidences, weird recurrences, and bizarre details.

Limited Edition contents:

• Reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork
• 120-page book featuring new writing by Virginie Sélavy and David Cairns, as well as archival writing by Tzvetan Todorov, André Bazin, Henri Alekan and more
• Limited Edition of 5,000 copies presented in a rigid box with full-height Scanavo cases for each film and removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

Special features include:

• Introduction to Dans la nuit by Institut Lumière director Thierry Frémaux
• Audio commentary on Dans la nuit by film historian Pamela Hutchinson
• Interview with French cinema expert Ginette Vincendeau on La Nuit fantastique and French cinema under the Occupation
• Archival TV interview with director Marcel L’Herbier on La Nuit fantastique
• Audio commentary for Le Diable souffle by film critics Elena and Manuela Lazic
• Interview on Le Diable souffle and director Edmond T. Gréville with film critic David Thompson
• Interview with Kim Newman on The Golem and Gustav Meyrink’s novel
• Archival TV introduction to The Golem by journalist and writer Louis Pauwels
  
• Interview with fashion expert Matteo Augello on The Woman with Red Boots
• Visual essay on The Woman with Red Boots by critic and author Samm Deighan
• Archival interview with Catherine Deneuve on The Woman with Red Boots
• Audio commentary on Three Lives and Only One Death by Adrian Martin
• Archival TV interview with Marcello and Chiara Mastroianni on Three Lives and Only One Death
• Documentary on the French cinéma fantastique then and now, featuring directors Lucile Hadžihalilović, Bertrand Mandico and Yann Gonzalez (2026, 54 mins)