Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Ariane Sapriel)

I was hoping to do a full post on the incredibly lovely Ariane Sapriel, a beguiling French actress who makes a big impression in Rollin's first feature The Rape of the Vampire. Unfortunately I have been able to find out next to nothing about this lovely and very striking woman with incredibly hypnotic eyes.
She has only two films listed to her credit at IMDB (this one and Alain Robbe Grillet's legendary Trans Europe Express) and this magazine cover advertising Rollin's film is the only image I could find of her online (courtesy of Germany's eBay).




A huge thank you to the fabulous blog Zines for the better scan of this cover!

Otherwise I can't find anything. Rollin mentions on the essential commentary on Encore's set of Le Viol Du Vampire that he remembers her as quite "charming" but as a bit of an "outsider". He also recalls how Ursulle Pauly delighted in hitting her for real in one of the film's most vicious moments, a story that probably says a lot as to why Sapriel never worked for Rollin again (and apparently never shot another film period).

Still, I find her quite captivating and regret that I can't find any more information on her. Surrounded by quite an extraordinary cast of characters in Rape of the Vampire, she really stands out and gives an extremely brave and effective performance.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Ursule Pauly)

(One of several images of Pauly that appears in the supplemental material on Encore's essential Le Viol Du Vampire set).

Outside of a couple of little tidbits on Encore's audio commentary for The Rape of the Vampire, Jean Rollin has very little to say about actress Ursule Pauly even though she would work again with him on his second feature, La Vampire Nue.
Pauly is a very captivating figure in Rollin's debut film and she would be one of the only members of the cast who would have several other further credits on her resume after wrapping the production.
Pauly, who I have been unable to find any real background information on, made her debut in a very small role in the 1968 biker flick The Wild Racers, a hard to come by film starring Fabien and the always splendid Mimsy Farmer. Rollin's film marks Pauly's second production and she's very memorable in a fairly large role. One of the first great beauties Rollin would shoot in his career, Pauly has a refreshingly natural quality about her and the camera absolutely loves her.
After shooting La Vampire Nue for Rollin in 1970, Pauly became a fairly in demand actress in French exploitation and shot several memorable productions in the next year. First up is Claude d'Anna's La Morte Trouble (Death Disturbs), which reportedly features one of Pauly's largest roles although I can't verify this as I haven't seen it. Next up is perhaps Pauly's most famous work outside of the Rollin films, Bruno Gantillon's very Rollin like Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fey (a film which also features Rape of the Vampire's Solange Pradel). Pauly's role isn't all that substantial in this production but she again proves very memorable and the film, currently available on a splendid special edition DVD from Mondo Macabre, is well worth tracking down.

Seemingly poised on what looked to be a successful career, Pauly apparently only shot two more productions before falling out of view. These are Jacques Scandelari's striking La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Beyond Love and Evil), which I saw years ago and wish I had a copy of, and Jean-Francoise Davy's La Débauche ou les amours buissonières (Dirty Lovers), a film which features Jess Franco regular Alice Arno.
No other credits are listed for Pauly and Rollin doesn't mention her in any of the materials I have. Any other information on what happened to this beguiling actress would be much appreciated.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Francois Tusques)

Easily one of the most unforgettable aspects of Jean Rollin’s first feature film Le Viol Du Vampire (The Rape of the Vampire) is its extraordinary score courtesy of famed Parisian Jazz Musician Francois Tusques. Swirling free-jazz, bits of classical romanticism and more than a trace of Avant-garde minimalism fill Tusques’ score, and it is indeed an unforgettable work that matches Rollin’s iconic imagery from beginning to end.
Born in Paris in 1938, Tusques began to make waves on the French music scene in the early to mid sixties as one of the key practitioners of the Free Jazz movement. Working with such famed and acclaimed French musicians like Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, Michel Portal, and François Jeanneau, Tusques quickly became known as one of the key French players of the day, and his albums Free Jazz and Le Nouveau Jazz are widely considered two of the most important French Jazz albums of the sixties.
Writing on his important collaboration with American drummer Sunny Murray in 1968 at the height of the student protests, TransAtlantic Magazine States that Tusque’s “infectiously repetitious pianism” blended in “perfectly with Murray’s pulsing washes of sound” and the two helped form a potent and haunting soundtrack to that most turbulent year in France.
Tusques was an ideal choice to compose the music for Rollin’s wild first feature, a work that very much resembles one of the unrestrained improvised pieces Tusque might have been playing in the period. Interviewed on Encore’s box set of Le Viol Du Vampire, Tusque recalls very little of the making of the film but he seems to have good feelings concerning both it and Rollin…he also seems quite thrilled with his cameo with his band that comes late in the film.
“The Apex of his ‘Out’ Recordings” (TransAtlantic) Intercommunal Music landed in 1971 and is widely considered his key work…an exhilarating suite broken up into several pieces that solidified his position as one of the great modern French players…a role that he continues to play to this day.
Unfortunately Tusque has recorded very little for the screen, with Le Viol Du Vampire marking his only notable soundtrack. He scored a short Bernadette Lafont film in 1968 and has since only worked sporadically in documentary work, a fact that makes his remarkable soundtrack for Le Viol Du Vampire one of the great cinematic one hit wonders.
Tusque’s soundtrack album for Le Viol Du Vampire has been released on CD according to Encore’s DVD set but I have been unable to track it down. Pity as I am sure it would reflect what TransAtlantic summed up about the remarkable Francois Tusque’s career…that it is indeed “a joyous revolution”.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Nicolas Devil)

It would be a grievous oversight for me not to mention Artist Nicolas Devil (Nicolas Deville) and the mind-blowing literary collaboration he did with Jean Rollin in 1967 called Saga De Xam. Devil is, of course, one of the first and most famous French erotic comic artists and Saga De Xam (with text by Rollin) is one of his greatest works. For some scans to the this work please visit the fantastic Zines blog and for more on Devil please check here and here and here.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Caroline Cartier)

Coming near the beginning of a long line of actresses playing some of the most beautiful and erotic vampires in screen history, French born Caroline Cartier makes quite a big impression as the title character in Jean Rollin’s first color feature, 1970’s La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire).

Unfortunately, unlike many of Rollin's other major productions, La Vampire Nue has still yet to be granted a major special Edition DVD release (although the British release which I have yet to see is said to contain an interview with Rollin). This, and the fact that I can’t find much of Rollin speaking directly on her, makes Cartier’s sole appearance in a Rollin feature a bit hard to write on in regards to it.

Born just after World War Two in Avignon, the lovely Cartier did some modeling in the sixties before making her big screen debut in La Vampire Nue. Very striking looking, with a real modern feel about her, Cartier is fairly unforgettable in Rollin’s film, even though it isn’t exactly a role that calls for her to stretch much as an actress. She is mostly called on to look simultaneously ravishing and mysterious, and she handles both duties quite well. Rollin would later recall in Virgins and Vampires that she was "extraordinarily charming" and that comes through as well in the film.

Rollin’s film would lead Cartier to quite a nice career in the seventies, including work in a number of major French films and television productions. She is probably best known for her work in Guy Gilles 1974 feature Le Jardin qui Bascule (The Garden that Tilts) opposite Delphine Seyrig, but it would be a meeting with actress Jeanne Moreau while shooting Andre Techine’s Souvenirs d’en France (French Provincial) in 1975 that would lead to her greatest role (outside of Rollin’s work) in Moreau’s own Lumiere in 1976.

The Cesar nominated Lumiere marks Moreau’s writing and directorial debut and it is telling that she gave one of the film’s largest roles to Cartier. The film, which continues to split the critical establishment, shows Cartier to be a far more gifted performer than perhaps previously imagined and it’s a shame it didn’t lead to more work for the young actress.

Caroline Cartier would continue making films and television productions for the next ten years, but she never equaled her work in Lumiere. Her final film came in 1987 with Alain Tanner’s La Vallee Fantome, in which she got to work opposite legendary Jean-Louis Trintignant. Cartier would tragically pass away far too young in August of 1991, leaving behind a number of films that marked her as a talented and versatile actress.




Hopefully La Vampire Nue will eventually get the Encore Special Edition it deserves with a Rollin commentary where he can go into detail on his memories of this beguiling young actress...until then she remains as mysterious as the iconic character she plays.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (A Slight Introduction to The Castel Twins)

I am going to be writing quite a lot here in the future on the remarkable and unforgettable Castel Twins, surely two of the most resonate forces in all of Jean Rollin's cinema. As a slight introduction, here are a couple of choice quotes by Rollin on the mighty duo and their debut in La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire).

“They are the only twins to be found in French cinema…they were originally hairdressers. One of my assistants came to me one day and told me that he’d found a pair of twins who might interest me, so I met with them. They wanted to be actresses, a dream they had for quite some time. They had a certain naïve quality that I felt would be ideal for my type of cinema.”
-Jean Rollin to Peter Blumenstock in Video Watchdog 31 and Virgins and Vampires-

“(Great) above all (were) the two Castel twins, serious as popes, two little hairdresser thrilled to be realizing their Hollywood dream, coming of age just before the shoot.”

“I wanted them (Castel Twins) by my side everyday, until the production director Jean Lavie let me know that I was ‘vampiring’ them, sapping them of their energy and wasting them away.”

“One of the twins knocked herself out while falling down a flight of stairs…she was very proud of it and is still talking about it to this day.”
-Jean Rollin introducing Le Vampire Nue in Virgins and Vampires-


I will be delivering long individual posts on both Catherine and Marie-Pierre here in the near future.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Michele Delehaye)

What a truly remarkable career French character actor Michele Delehaye has had. In a career spanning more than forty years with almost a hundred films on his resume (including many with some of France’s greatest directors) the ‘Grandmaster’ in Jean Rollin’s La Vampire Nue has certainly carved out a very special place for himself in modern French cinema.
Born in France in 1929 to a very strict and religious father, the early life of Delehaye was certainly an adventurous one, and it included stints at a Jesuit school, a spot in the military, postal and factory work as well as a minor brush with the law. By the mid-fifties Delehaye got his first major career break when he landed a job as a writer for Detective magazine. Soon after he made the acquaintance of one Eric Rohmer and his life changed forever.
The legendary Rohmer introduced Delehaye to the members of the French New Wave and soon he was working as a critic at the influential Cahiers du Cinema. He would write for the prestigious film journal for more than a decade before losing his position in 1969 due to political issues.
Delehaye’s first film role came in Jean-Luc Godard’s section of the 1964 anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G and it would set in motion a career that would turn out to be incredibly prolific and noteworthy.
Appearing in front of the camera for nearly every major French New Wave director (including several for Godard and Rivette early on) Delehaye proved himself a capable and memorable actor although typically he would find himself in mostly smaller supporting roles.
The Nude Vampire marked the first time Delehaye worked with Jean Rollin, and it serves as a reminder that Rollin’s early cinema does indeed take place just a handful of years after the most potent explosion of the New Wave, even if stylistically it is deliberately far removed from it. Delehaye’s work for Rollin would prove most resonate and he would be cast in Jean’s next film as well, 1971’s Le Frisson des Vampires…that same year he would appear in both Borowczyk’s Blanche and Rivette’s Out 1 for good measure!



Delehaye, now nearing eighty years old, has never stopped working and, along with being a top-supporting player, he has also worked as a scriptwriter, helped out behind the camera and even received a special thanks from Godard himself in Histoire du Cinema. While not a major player in Jean Rollin’s filmography, a tribute to one of cinema’s great sidemen seemed in order.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Sandra Julien)

Information on heartbreakingly beautiful Sandra Julien as been most hard to come by. The girl that Rollin correctly described as a "young beauty with a perfect body"
(in Encore's Le Frisson des Vampires booklet) hails originally from Toulon, France and was born Sandra Calaputti according to IMDB. While Le Frisson des Vampires marks the only time Sandra worked with Rollin, her husband Pierre Julien worked behind the scenes with the iconic director again a few years down the road Jeunes Filles Impudiques.



Sandra's time in front of the moving camera was relatively brief, just about five years from 71 to 76, and her most notable titles outside of Thrill of the Vampires are Max Pecas' I am a Nymphomaniac and I am Frigid...Why? She also appeared in Claude Chabrol's excellent Nada and in two films from famed 'Pink' director Norifumi Suzuki.



Here are a few behind the scenes shot of the stunning Sandra taken from Encore's slim but excellent special edition of Le Frisson des Vampires plus a couple of thoughts from Rollin himself taken from the interview he did with Peter Blumenstock in Video Watchdog 31 and Virgins and Vampires.



I will be listening to Rollin's commentary for Le Frisson des Vampires later this week and will update this post with any further thoughts he might give regarding Sandra Julien here.



"I worked with Sandra’s husband, Pierre
Julien, who was a technician on Le Frisson…he suggested Sandra."

"She was a model and very beautiful. She also appeared in a couple of
other French films at the time…."

"We made a screen test and she was perfect.”

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Dominique)

How fitting is it that information on the unforgettable and eternally mysterious Dominique is incredibly hard to come by? The former dancer, described as having a great sense of humor by Rollin, has appeared only a few times in front of the camera...fittingly enough the few appearances have apparently only been for Rollin. Enjoy the pics (and more are to come in the future) and keep an eye on those Grandfather Clocks.









***Behind the scenes shots taken from Encore's Le Frisson des Vampires (Thrill of the Vampires) box set***

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Jean-Jacques Renon)

The entrancing work of cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon is one of French Cinema's best kept secrets. While many of the film's he photographed and lit in his near two decade career have vanished into obscurity, his work with Jean Rollin will live forever. I will be posting more on Renon in the future as he shot several of Rollin's greatest films, for this post though I am just presenting some stills from Thrill of the Vampires showing off Renon's inventive and miraculous lighting set ups. Aren't these just gorgeous?

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Acanthus)

It is impossible to imagine Thrill of the Vampires without the astonishing score by Acanthus. Simultaneously sloppy and majestic and containing the kind of ambition that perhaps only an inexperienced group of teenagers could possess, the music for Jean Rollin's third film is just unforgettable. The soundtrack can currently be heard on the great but sadly out of print The Films of Jean Rollin CD, as well as on the slideshow section of Encore's Le Frisson des Vampires box set. Here are a few quotes by Rollin on the band and their contribution:

"I thought it would be nice to work that in (the hippie culture). I liked the music of the group Acanthus very much. Jean-Phillipe Delammare, the brother of my assistant Jean-Noelle, had a little music publishing company. One day he told me that there were these young schoolboys, who had formed a group and liked the fantastic cinema, and that they wanted to work with me. That’s how we got together. They separated right after and never did anything else again. They disappeared.”
-To Peter Blumenstock in Virgins and Vampires and Video Watchdog 31-

“Today their pop music might seem old-fashioned. But at the time, backing Le Frisson des Vampires with modern music by a group of inexperienced high school students working with the enthusiasm generated by Jean-Phillipe Delamarre and his technicians, seemed almost avant-garde.”
-Contained in the liner notes to The Films of Jean Rollin CD-

“They were school kids and their total experience consisted of a few youth club dates and lots of wood shedding. This lack of gloss and their status as enthusiastic amateurs was very attractive to Rollin. He showed them the film and they played him pieces they already had that they felt would be suitable. They specialized in a sort of free form progressive frock, replete with slashing guitar chords and odd, lyrical snatches of flute and organ. Some of the track, the credit sequence for example, was completely improvised. The results were amazingly successful-but Acanthus, unfortunately, were not; they broke up soon after the film was released.”
-Cohill and Tombs on the band in Immoral Tales-

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Pierre Raph)

Making his very memorable debut on a Jean Rollin film is French jazz and classical composer Pierre Raph. Raph's spare and romantic score for Requiem for a Vampire is lovely, compelling and serves Rollin's striking images quite well. Rollin himself has this to say about Raph in the booklet that came along with Encore's box set:

"(He was) an excellent composer and (his music) complemented the pictures. Particularly the visit to the dungeon in ruins that we had rented..."

Rollin, who had met Raph through assistant Jean-Noel Delamarre, would use the talented composer several more times on the films Jeunes Filles Impudiques (Schoolgirl Hitchhikers) (1973) The Iron Rose (1973) and The Demoniacs (1974). It is hard to imagine any of these films without Raph's music. According to the IMDB, Raph's only other film score comes with Le Débauche ou les amours buissonières in 1971 for director Jean-Francoise Davy, a film I mentioned in an earlier post on it's co-star Ursule Pauly.
Remembering his striking work on The Iron Rose in The liner notes to The Films of Jean Rollin CD, Rollin said that Raph was "able to set the tone for the baroque atmosphere of this story within the space of a few seconds." A less than prolific film composer (but respected by many in both the modern jazz and classical worlds), the work of Pierre Raph with Jean Rollin will be forever treasured by both of their fans.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Renan Polles)

Requiem for a Vampire’s beautiful, poetic and stately photography is credited to Renan Polles, a talented French cinematographer who sometimes goes under the name of Jacques Flood. Astonishingly Requiem for a Vampire marks just the second major photography credit the gifted Polles, with the first being a 1969 short for director Jean-Michel Barjol.
Polles had worked previously with Rollin as part of the camera crew on Le Frisson des Vampires. Sadly, despite the excellent work he does on his first feature as cinematographer, Requiem for a Vampire would mark the last time Polles would work with Rollin, as the director would return to Jean-Jacques Renon soon after.
While Polles’ work on Requiem doesn’t contain quite the degree of fantastical greatness (especially in the lighting) that Renon had delivered for Le Frisson, there is still no denying that Polles work is quality stuff. Rollin himself would remember Polles fondly in Encore's Requiem for a Vampire booklet by saying that he, "was pleased with the work made by Polles, who'd taken Jean-Jacques Renon's place because the latter was unavailable." Polles balances the film’s wide open early outdoor daylight shots with the film’s later more interior and nightime atmosphere spectacularly well and his work helps make Requiem for a Vampire one of Rollin’s most distinctive looking films. Much more naturalistic than Renon, it’s no surprise that one of the filmmakers Polles is most associated with is Jacques Doillon, a director very much removed from the fantasy and horror genre that Rollin specializes in.

Polles filmography includes films with Doillon and Yvan Lagrange and he has continued to work prolifically in French and film and television. Despite only collaborating twice with Rollin, his work on Requiem for a Vampire makes him an important contributor to the French horror genre and a key, if relatively minor, player in Jean Rollin's canon.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Mireille Dargent)

Mireille Dargent is another one of those very special performers who almost exclusively only worked with Jean Rollin. Her career in front of the camera, made up of only half a dozen films, was unfortunately very short but her work in four of Rollin's greatest films will always be treasured by fans. Here are some quotes from Rollin taken from Encore's Requiem for a Vampire booklet, as well as the audio commentary, on Mireille. The behind the scenes shots are from Encore's set as well.



"An agent introduced me to Mireille Dargent who would play Pony's partner, due to Cathy being busy or pregnant again. This agent was a crook. He used to collect Mireille's wages filling his own pocket without giving anything to her. I hired a lawyer and the agent hopped it. Mireille was grateful for me for taking care of her...A great friendship united us. She had a very round face and her plaits made her look as young as Pony. She had a plump body, very sensual..."
-Encore's Booklet-



"She was very strange...everybody was in love with her, including myself."
-Commentary-

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Marie-Pierre Castel)

Whether she is going by the name Pony Castel or Pony Tricot, Marie-Pierre Castel remains one of the most bewitching and memorable figures in the world of French film in the seventies. Lovely, graceful and endearingly witty, several of Jean Rollin's key works are unthinkable without her striking presence.
Information on my favorite Castel is a bit hard to come by. She was born in 1950 and between the years 1970 and 1977 she appeared in just eleven features, sometime with her twin sister Cathy and sometimes without. Of these eleven films, seven were directed by Jean Rollin. The remaining features have for the most part unfortunately been all but lost in time, with the exception of her final film, 1977's Rene The Cane, a film directed by Francis Girod starring Sylvia Kristel and Gerard Depardieu.
These behind the scenes shots from Requiem for a Vampire capture Marie at her peak, filming what would become her most famous and iconic role. More to come on Marie-Pierre here in the future.












***These shots are all taken from the incedible slideshow on Encore's Requiem for a Vampire box set. Please buy the set to the many others.***

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Hughes Quester)

In a career covering nearly four decades, prolific French actor Hughes Quester has tallied up an impressive sixty or so films with directors ranging from Eric Rohmer to Krzysztof Kieslowski. For Jean Rollin fans though Hughes Quester will always be known best as actor Pierre DuPont, the young man who co-starred with haunting Francoise Pascal in The Iron Rose.
Quester was born in early August of 1948. His first film role came as a bit part in 1969 with William Klein’s Mr. Freedom, an ambitious film starring Delphine Seyrig and Serge Gainsbourg (a man who would play an important part in Quester’s career down the road).
Quester would continue working as a bit player in films throughout the next few years before landing his first substantial role in director Yannick Bellon’s Quelque part quelqu'un in 1972 (a film finally released in the United States in 1979 as Somewhere, Someone).
Some television work would follow for Quester before he would land what has turned out to be one of his most memorable roles, as the nameless title character in Jean Rollin’s Le Rose de Fer. Sadly Quester and Rollin did not have a good working relationship, a fact detailed by Rollin in this interview with Peter Blumenstock that can be found in Video Watchdog 31 and Virgins and Vampires:

“I had a lot of problems with the lead actor, Hughes Quester. He didn’t like me, which was quite a problem, because there are only two persons in the film, so we had to work together all the time. This eventually led him to taking his name off the film, so now, Hughes Quester is credited as Pierre Dupont.”

Regardless of the problems behind the scenes, Quester is fine in his role as the doomed nameless young man, although few would argue that The Iron Rose is talented Francoise Pascal’s film all the way. Perhaps this is something Quester sensed while shooting the film. Whatever the problems were between Rollin and Quester, The Iron Rose has survived much longer than most of the other films the young actor shot in this period.
Quester continued to work steadily after his time with Rollin, including a solid turn for Serge Gainsbourg in 1975's audacious Je t’aime moi non plus opposite Jane Birkin and Joe Dallesandro. Many films and television roles followed before Quester struck cinematic gold in 1990 with his role as Igor in Eric Rohmer’s masterful A Tale of Springtime.
Quester would continue his late period resurgence with a role in Kieslowski’s incredible Three Colors: Blue in 1993 and in 2006 he would be awarded the distinguished Commander of Arts and Letters title from France for his long and noteworthy career.

Jean Rollin: The Collaborators (Francoise Pascal Part 1)

I will be posting a full tribute to The Iron Rose star Francoise Pascal in the next day or so. In the meantime, I thought fans of Pascal and the film might get a kick out of looking at some screen shots from Francoise's second film, Norman J. Warren's Loving Feeling from 1969. Warren's odd film features Francoise in a few scenes as a character only referred to as 'the model' but she proves to be quite unforgettable.