La Nuit fantastique

La Nuit fantastique The Fantastic Night is a 1942 French fantasy film directed by Marcel LHerbier. It is regarded as one of the most successful films made in France during the German occupation.

As LHerbier was finishing Histoire de rire, his first film made during the Occupation, he was presented with a scenario written by Louis Chavance and Maurice Henry which immediately suggested to him the possibility of creating a film in the spirit of some of his earlier silent films, on a theme that he characterised as a realistic fairytale. At the time he seemed to be thinking of a tradition begun by the films of Georges Mlis, though in his later memoirs he made a link rather with a style derived from the Lumire brothers, in which realistic images were here pushed towards a kind of surrealism. It gave him the opportunity to return to the kinds of experiment with visual style, and now also with sound effects, which had marked silent films such as LInhumaine and Feu Mathias Pascal.The dialogue was written by Henri Jeanson, uncredited because he was at the time forbidden to work for the press or the cinema following his imprisonment for pacifist writings and noncooperation with the Vichy government. ........

Source: Wikipedia