Our study is based on the connection of two orders of phenomena wich have marked the anglo-saxon and french film production during these last twenty years. The first one is economical and technical, it’s the advent of numerical imagery wich replaces more and more the argentical medium disrupting the ways of composition, of diffusion and of reception of film movies. The second one is esthetical and poetical, it’s the renewed outbreak and the popularity of fiction films wich belong to the narrative genre of fantasy. How can we understand the correlation of technical innovation and narrative conservatism without interpreting it as a manifestation of an ideological stiffening of occidental culture ? This correlation will seem to us an essential relationship beetween film and numerical imagery, as a begining of an hybridation. If the narrative art wins a hyperrealistic dimension thanks to the simulation potential of data processing, on the other side, the fiction storytelling reinjects the meaning of duration, of traditional time, in the image also the numerical imagery intelligibility is governed by the emergency of an amnesic reiterative time. Then we will apply ourselves to define the fantasy genre and its properties in poetical film language. Determining this genre specific difference as a certain use of special effects, we will study it and its usage in the fantasy stories as enchanted effects. At last, we will show how numerical mutation of film industry and imaginary threatens the film narrative and why we can consider this type of fictions as a way of resistance in front of the new imagery, the neotraditionalism.
