As you can tell from my avatar, I'm a son of the so-called
Fantastic Cinema.
This definition is more appropriate than
Fantasy, because the
Fantasy is only one of subgenres, as well as the
Science Fiction or the classic
Horror, collected under the unique category of Fantastic genre.
The Fantastic genre is maybe the purest form of Cinema, because it expresses the creative power of man, the universal imaginary that born with Cinema itself. On the big screen it projecting fears and desires that come from the deep roots of the human soul.
It's what happened, for example, since the 30s, which are the years of the
Great American Depression, where the public, disoriented and seeking "comforting-thrill", enjoys the films of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf man, Dr. Jekyll, attracted by the charisma of actors like Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Claude Rains.
THE MUMMY (UNIVERSAL - 1932 - US)
Are movies that refer to popular beliefs and legends narrated by the gothic-romantic nineteenth-century European literature and, stylistically, characterized by the
German Expressionism rules. At a time when it had not yet appeared the color, stood out wonderfully the contrasts between light and shadow.
The
German Expressionism placed emphasis on aesthetic sophistication and the pictorial rigor of the sets. All this flows in the background of some sort of "metaphysical realism."
METROPOLIS (PARAMOUNT - 1927 - US)
On the other hand, the
Fantastic Cinema was never easily classifiable, its boundaries are somewhat imprecise. Think to the inserts of fantastical elements into
Comedy (
Heaven Can Wait by Ernst Lubitsch,
It Happened Tomorrow by René Clair,
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz) or the intertwining with the
Noir that heightens aspects of darkness, of alienation and tragedy of the characters (
Cat People by Jacques Tourneur,
Night Has a Thousand Eyes by John Farrow).
NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (PARAMOUNT - 1948 - US)
In fact, the label of
Fantastic Cinema is our convention, created a posteriori. Even
Sci-fi,
Horror,
Fantasy never existed as such but only represent the evolution of a certain kind of Cinema through various periods and socio-cultural contexts. So, especially at the beginning, the Fantastic genre was a container that had a connotation strictly horror, before converging progressively in a sci-fi mixture.
In the 50s, after the gothic-expressionist influence of the previous decades, in which the man's fears are rooted in the mystery of the unknown and in the imaginary of a society still immune from disaster, the American
Fantastic Cinema becomes the mirror a world plagued by uncertainty and post-atomic terror, where the anxiety that comes directly from the unconscious takes on the screen the shape of giant bugs and dinosaurs, horrible creatures and not anymore fascinating, facing to which the human being feels helpless and the mad doctor himself "guilty" or "responsible". Certainly, it survives the myth of Beauty and the Beast, but just coated of new meanings related to manipulations and to the devastating effects of the supposed progress.
TARANTULA (UNIVERSAL - 1955 - UK Quad)
ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (ALLIED ARTISTS - 1958 - US)
Not surprisingly, it is the Cinema of the first mutations and gender contaminations, as will happen with the English production company
Hammer Films that will acquire the rights of the most famous "monsters" of the antagonist
Universal Pictures, but then directing towards just sci-fi mold productions.
THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (HAMMER - 1955 - ITALIAN)
In the USA, crossing the "sense of wonder" with new technological worlds that was promising science, bringing back the magic and occult dimension on the tracks of the rationality of science, exploring the mysterious cosmic forces, the "horror-fiction" becomes increasingly "science-fiction", and in the postwar period, following the economic boom the Drive-ins are filling up of teenagers in the spirit of entertainment: people want to feel strong emotions, but also wants that the terrifying experience turns into something fun.
FORBIDDEN PLANET (MGM - 1956 - US)
Soon the American
Fantastic Cinema learns to specialize and, especially in the following decade to the 50s (a decidedly commercial decade), substituting another magic pattern, one that's created directly from the "dream factory" of Hollywood. But that's another story...
