With a few exceptions, classic fantasy isn’t a genre I normally gravitate toward. But there are prime examples of its subgenres that I find enchanting—steampunk, surrealist, and speculative. These films have little in common with one another, but they all offer a version of reality slightly askew of our own and give us another world to ponder.
Beauty and the Beast (1946), France [La Belle et la Bête]
Jean Cocteau’s adaptation of the classic French fairy tale marries sumptuous costumes, divine special effects, beautiful camera work, and imaginative living set pieces. Cocteau brings his exceptional surrealist poetry and imagination to the screen in this film. Magic seems possible when watching candelabras come alive and ethereal costumes sparkle. It is a world where household objects are enchanted and love can create, or save, a beast.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Australia
Legendary Peter Weir directed this classic of Australian cinema. Based on a novel by the same name, a class of young girls escape the confines of their strict boarding school on a St. Valentine’s Day picnic outing. During the hot and oppressive afternoon, a small group of the girls wanders off to explore the exposed rock formation, setting off a chain of inexplicable incidents of frozen time and double visions. It’s left to the viewer to decide what really happened that day.
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
From the bizarre mind of Terry Gilliam, the film weaves together aspects of many familiar fairy tales and legends. Moments of the Gingerbread Man, Sleeping Beauty, The Huntsman, Red Riding Hood, The Frog Prince, and more are depicted. Rather than being historians gathering folklore, the Grimm brothers are con artists who become part of the stories themselves. With lush, colorful settings, and sometimes unsettling detail, it’s a classic adventure with plenty of the fantastical.
The Prestige (2006)
Set firmly within a realistic Victorian England, it also dabbles in the world of dueling illusionists and steampunk inventors. While it only barely reflects the content of the book, the film tells its own fascinating tale of misdirection, mysticism, and the questionable mastery of elemental physics. In the way director Christopher Nolan does so well, the movie flirts with the fantastic only slightly, making the unreal seem possible.
Originally written for DVD Netflix