These seductive, deviant adult fairy tales may not make great bedtime stories, but they are guaranteed to produce fever dreams.
Directed by René Clair • 1942 • United States
Starring Veronica Lake, Fredric March, Susan Hayward
Veronica Lake casts a seductive spell as a charmingly vengeful sorceress in this supernatural screwball classic. Many centuries after cursing the male descendants of the Salem puritan who sent her ...
Directed by Jean Cocteau • 1946 • France
Starring Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély
Jean Cocteau’s sublime adaptation of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy-tale masterpiece—in which the pure love of a beautiful girl melts the heart of a feral but gentle beast—is a landmark of motion picture f...
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi • 1953 • Japan
Starring Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Kinuyo Tanaka
By the time he made UGETSU, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ...
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1970 • France
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, Delphine Seyrig
In this lovingly crafted, wildly eccentric adaptation of a classic French fairy tale, Jacques Demy casts Catherine Deneuve as a princess who must go into hiding as a scullery maid in order to fend o...
Directed by Jaromil Jireš • 1970 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Jaroslava Schallerová, Helena Anyžová, Petr Kopriva
A girl on the verge of womanhood finds herself in a sensual fantasyland of vampires, witchcraft, and other threats in this eerie and mystical movie daydream. VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WON...
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1975 • Sweden
Starring Josef Köstlinger, Irma Urrila, Håkan Hagegård
This scintillating screen version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s beloved opera showcases Ingmar Bergman’s deep knowledge of music and gift for expressing it cinematically. Casting some of Europe’s fin...
Directed by Louis Malle • 1975 • France, Germany
Starring Cathryn Harrison, Joe Dallesandro, Thérèse Ghiese
Louis Malle meets Lewis Carroll in this bizarre and bewitching trip down the rabbit hole. After skirting the horrors of a mysterious war being waged in the countryside, beautiful young Lil...
Directed by Wim Wenders • 1987 • Germany, France
Starring Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Peter Falk
WINGS OF DESIRE is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the peopl...