Le roi des aulnes

Goethe, fantasy elements, special effects ala 1931, and cinematography out in the woods at night ... hey, I'm in. The effect of the sinister erl king and his scantily clad fairies is achieved using overlays which don't always work perfectly with the underlying images, but convey the ethereal sense of the story and its spooky danger, and visually the film is beautiful. I liked reading Goethe's words at the outset but I'm not sure about the choice of telling the entire story this way, since we then know what's coming, and it's already pretty simple. However, there's something truly charming and poetic about this fairy tale set to early celluloid, and it's well worth spending 45 minutes on. It makes me wish Marie-Louise Iribe had made more films as a director.