The Cinema of Jean Rollin: Les Pays Loins (1965)

Between 1958’s Les Amours Jaunes and 1965’s Les Pays Loins, Jean Rollin would shoot two short films (Ciel de Cuivre and Un Cheval Pour Deux) and would begin work on a feature (L’itineraire Marin) that would never be completed. I have unfortunately not seen the two completed shorts, which is why I am skipping ahead in our story to the rather remarkable Les Pays Loins, a sixteen minute work that shows Rollin stylistically and thematically gearing up for his famed feature films that would begin rolling out just a few years later.

Les Pays Loins (The Distant Lands) got its start, title wise, as an unpublished novel Rollin had completed in the early sixties. He recalled to Peter Blumenstock in Virgins and Vampires that the book failed to find a release due to the fact that the publisher, Eric Lasfeld, had died before it got to the printing stages. A frustrated Rollin turned his attention back to the idea of filmmaking and began shooting Les Pays Loins. Since Rollin admitted the short “just used the title” of his unpublished book to Blumenstock, and that it had “nothing to do with (the) novel” which he recalled “was basically written as an essay.", it is hard to say what thematic elements the book and unfinished film share.

Two facts are well worth pointing out though in regards to Rollin in this period. One is his increasing distancing from the French New Wave that had proved so popular in the late fifties and early sixties. Rollin mentioned to Blumenstock that he had come in contact with most of the movement’s shining lights at the Henri Langlois Cinematteque but he stated that The New Wave “was not exactly my cup of tea.” So, Les Pays Loins can be looked upon as yet another major artistic step in Rollin separating himself from the popular and acclaimed cinema of the time.



The second item worth noting in regards to Les Pays Loins is the fact that Rollin had shot a documentary on Spain’s controversial dictator Generallisimo Francisco Franco just a year before in 1964. This work, entitled Vivre En Espagne (Life in Spain) showed clearly Rollin’s position as a member of the left, something he admitted to Blumenstock. It is this attitude that fuels Les Pays Loins, a film that slyly confronts many of the racist attitudes in France prevalent in the mid sixties especially towards the Algerian people.



The shot on 35 MM Les Pays Loins is a challenging work and an accomplished one that stylistically shows how much Rollin had developed as a filmmaker in the seven years since Les Amours Jaunes. A professional piece of filmmaking highlighted by Rollin’s remarkable sense of space (something that would he would use expertly in all of his films to come), Les Pays Loins is a lovely looking black and white production that is at times mysterious, moving and never less than intriguing.



Focusing on one of the major thematic obsessions relevant in many of his greatest films, that of isolation and the idea of being lost, Les Pays Loins tells the story of a French couple seemingly trapped in a strange city surrounded by people they can’t understand. It would be a storyline Rollin would return to later in such works a Night of the Hunted and Lost in New York, and a subject that would haunt many of his works ranging from Requiem For a Vampire to Two Orphan Vampires. Few filmmakers can capture the feeling of wandering loss like Rollin and Les Pays Loins seems to be ground zero for this striking pattern that connects many of Rollin's greatest works.




Rollin states in the booklet accompanying Encore’s release of The Demoniaques that filming on Les Pays Loins took place on “Saturdays and Sundays” at “the old Belleville District”, and watching the film today it is hard to imagine anyone capturing the fading and at times destroyed area any better that Rollin does here. From the opening frames on we are treated to an astonishing snapshot of what this district, that doesn’t exist anymore, looked like in the mid sixties and Rollin doesn’t shy away from presenting the most beautiful sections to the most run down. Les Pays Loins is a remarkably sensitive piece of work, one that simultaneously highlights the loss of the community as well as its obviously beautiful aspects.




Recalling his small crew in The Demoniaques booklet, Rollin states that his friend Pascal Fardoulis played the main actor while “Alain-Yves Beaujour was working as assistant…and Jean-Denis Bonan (was) the script girl.” He also recalled the set would be filled at different times with colleagues and friends including the singer Ben Zimet, the writer Clement Lepidis (who would bring his son Roger) and Rollin’s future literary collaborator Nicolas Devil. One gets the idea that the filming of Les Pays Loins was a collaborative effort made by a group of friends, artists and family members, all held together by the vision of Jean Rollin and a shared passion for cinema. Rollin would state in the Encore booklet that “At that time, we could all believe in the cinema” and it is that thought that controls every adventurous frame of Les Pays Loins, a well thought out and adult work that is as celebratory as it is lamenting.




The IMDB lists the cinematographers of Les Pays Loins as Gerard de Battista and Georges Delauney, but the Encore booklet contradicts this and lists Gilbert Gibdourney as the man responsible for the film’s striking look. My guess is that the look was achieved though a combination of several efforts with the veteran Delauney (listed as technical consultant) offering suggestions on how to accomplish the rather complex ideas in regards to lighting and framing Rollin was attempting. On Encore's Audio Commentary for the film, Rollin states it was in fact Battista who performed most of the cinematography, and he praises the look of the film he helped to accomplish.




Joining Fardoulis (who would later appear in Rollin’s second feature The Nude Vampire before his untimely death) are the mysterious and lovely Julie (who Rollin in the Encore booklet admits everyone on the set was infatuated with but who has since fell very much from view) and in a smaller role is Ben Zimet, an actor who would later feature in Rollin’s The Demoniaques as well as Lars Von Trier’s Europa. The cast member who has had the most credits though is Bernard Papineau, a talented actor who has worked with Claude Chabrol several times and would appear in Rollin’s Night of the Hunted and The Runaways in 1981. Tragically the young actress who appeared in the apartment scene (actually Rollin's father's apartment) named Nadine Ninio died shortly after the film wrapped due to a drug overdose.





Rollin recalls on Encore's commentary that his film that centered on a "strange universe" where "everyone speaks different languages" failed to find any sort of distribution in the mid sixties, and wasn't seen by the public until a retrospective four decades later. Encore's excellent The Demoniaques box set marked the first time the film had been available for the general public and, along with the audio commentary, it also includes a photo gallery. The short film also appears as an extra on Redemption's import Lost in New York disc as well as their Region One The Iron Rose DVD, although I have heard certain copies of this disc have a glitch at the end.




Finally the film includes a fantastic jazz based score that is simultaneously catchy and haunting. I have not been able to determine who composed and performed the remarkable music as neither the Encore liner notes mention it nor does the IMDB.

The Cinema of Jean Rollin: La Vampire Nue (1970)

Look up pretty much any review of Jean Rollin’s second feature, 1970’s La Vampire Nue (The Nude Vampire), and the one word that seems to always appear when describing it is ‘bizarre’. Indeed, ‘bizarre’ does seem to be the absolute perfect word for the film, a surreal and extremely odd science fiction vampire picture that sees Rollin reinforcing the confrontational direction his career had taken with Le Viol du Vampire the year before.






Ironically, La Vampire Nue started out as Rollin’s idea of a much more traditional film than Le Viol du Vampire. Rollin would recall to Peter Blumenstock in Video Watchdog 31 (and Virgins and Vampires) that with La Vampire Nue he “wanted to make a well done, traditional mystery film” and that he realizes “Looking back on it now, (that) it’s not a classical film at all.” Following that amusing understatement Rollin would later write in Virgins and Vampires that “La Vampire Nue was conceived as a mystery film” but that the “very strong ideas” were “not very well executed.”





Rollin is perhaps being too hard on himself with that last thought, as La Vampire Nue is actually quite a wonderful production. Admittedly not as powerful or as ultimately memorable as the two features that ended up following it, it’s still a resonate work marked with some of Rollin’s most iconic imagery and an assured style that was not totally there yet in Le Viol du Vampire. As Rollin would say in his Virgins and Vampires introduction to the film, “By the time my second film rolled around I was a little wiser.” And indeed that really shows.








La Vampire Nue, despite being completely off the wall, is actually very much a more traditional work that the two part Le Viol du Vampire. Unlike that freewheeling improvised first film, Rollin’s second outing started out life on paper, with a script the director penned with Serge Moati. While the final product veered fairly far from the original treatment, due to budgetary reasons and Rollin’s jazz like attitudes towards filmmaking, the idea of making a more straightforward narrative production comes through in La Vampire Nue.







Tombs and Cohill would give the plot of La Vampire Nue a go in their wonderful Immoral Tales. Their synopsis seemed an ideal thing to reprint partially here:

“The story of La Vampire Nue involves a bizarre suicide cult, a mysterious man known only as The Master, weird experiments with phials of colored blood, and a dimensional gap into another world.”

Even better was their attempt at identifying the strange brilliance of the film’s final moments, which are among the most memorable in all of Rollin’s filmography:

“It remains remarkably true to its original conception as a film around the idea of mystery…even the ending when an explanation is given for all the mysterious events, is successfully undercut. The film suddenly takes off into Science Fiction territory and, as Rollin said later, leaves the way open for a second part to begin just as the first one ends.”

It is indeed the weird Science Fiction line that runs through La Vampire Nue that separates it from most of his other upcoming Vampire epics. Although it’s not totally separate as its obvious fascination with the blooming hippie communal culture, and its trappings, absolutely do connect it with Rollin’s next film, 1971’ astonishing Les Frissons des Vampires.

The film also continues the trend set with Le Viol du Vampire of Rollin wearing his influences clearly on his sleeve, with Franju’s Judex being the work that is alluded to over and over again. Daniel Bird would write on the similarities between the two auteur's in his Fascination: Jean Rollin Cinematic Bird by noting that “Franju, like Rollin, was deeply influenced by the style of the past, especially the serials of Feuillade which he lovingly parodied in his Judex. Rollin has acknowledged Judex as the source for the animal mask cult in La Vampire Nue.” Rollin himself would speak further on the influence of Franju to Blumenstock when he recalled “Of course Judex inspired me a lot, and also the concept of surrealism in general.”

The main thing that sets La Vampire Nue apart from Le Viol du Vampire is its astonishing color palate. Rollin is one of the supreme masters at the use of color and La Vampire Nue’s place as his first color feature automatically makes it one of his most important. Tohill and Tombs correctly note that the film’s look derives from “pulp comics and old paperback covers” though surprisingly Rollin had this to say about the look of his color features to Blumenstock, “I often hear that my use of color bears a certain signature. I never thought of that while I was making these films.” Regardless, Rollin’s use of color is instantly recognizable and La Vampire Nue’s memorable look would be soon perfected in the films to come.

Working with Rollin for the first time on La Vampire Nue is talented cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon and the fruitful collaboration (which I will write more on in the future) was apparently not always a harmonious one. Rollin, recalling the film’s bold look, mentioned to Blumenstock that “I am responsible for the way my films are lighted, but I also had big problems with my director of photography, Jean-Jacques Renon, because he had a vision of his own which he wanted to realize.” Still, problems aside La Vampire Nue is a gorgeous production (unfortunately marred by Redemptions sub-par Region 1 DVD) and Renon’s place behind the camera was a noteworthy one.

In front of the camera are several familiar faces to Jean Rollin lovers including the legendary Castel Twins making their very memorable debut, Olivier Rollin and Ursule Pauly. Most memorable though is lovely Caroline Cartier, who proves to be one of the most striking of the many female heroines Rollin has had over the years.
La Vampire Nue finally feels a little fragmented though and it stands as one of Rollin’s middle tier works. Tim Lucas points out in his Video Watchdog review of the film that while the picture is “a key work in his filmography” and that “The first half works exceedingly well, frequently evoking the sense of exposure and danger felt in dreams…” but “The second half , which is more narrative driven than fluid, is somewhat less successful”. It’s an accurate statement as certainly the film’s haunting early shots of Cartier running from Judex like masked men is certainly more resonate and successful than some of the film’s later moments, such as strange extended sequence between Olivier Rollin and a nude model that feels more like a concession to the film’s producer for more skin rather than a necessary piece of the film’s striking and mostly masterful dreamlike presentation.

The film does finds a perfect balance in its final moments between something completely nonsensical and something downright profound. Lucas notes the influence of the events leading up to the film with this thought provoking reaction, “The greatest oddity of this production is that its most dreamlike passages were written consciously, while its historical parallels-it was filmed in the aftermath of the Paris student riots in 1968, thus explaining the outraged tone of generational conflict-were unintentional, hence subconscious!”

La Vampire Nue, despite some problems, is a striking production and as Tohill and Tombs point out “a great leap forward” for Rollin and his most unique brand of cinema. From the unbelievably cool S&M inspired splendor of Jio Berk’s costume work, to the eye popping color design, to Yvon Geraud’s lovely minimalistic score, La Vampire Nue is the near masterpiece Rollin would deliver just a year later. It is also a film that features a couple of the most mesmerizing (and almost excruciatingly long) single takes Rollin ever mounted, and in these moments La Vampire Nue seems even more confrontational to the ideas of a traditional cinema than Le Viol du Vampire.

The film was greeted in much the same way most of Rollin’s most poetic and haunting works have been. He recalled in Virgins and Vampires that, “The screenings were punctuated by laughter and sarcastic remarks” and that he was particularly hurt by the reception that greeted the ending of the film due to the fact that “This (vampire appearing from box on beech) is one of the most unusual images of my cinema, and despite the whistling and heckling it remains dazzling for me.”













The film’s poor reception must have been particularly hard for Rollin who had risked financial ruin finishing the film and, on top of that, had been involved in a hit and run accident shortly after shooting wrapped. His stories of struggling to edit the film alone while injured in the Virgins and Vampires book are simultaneously funny and poignant, and show just how much he was willing to give for his films.

La Vampire Nue is available in several different home video versions; unfortunately none of them are a full-blown special editions. VSOM put a terribly blurry ‘authorized’ VHS release in the mid nineties that is worth seeking out for collectors due to Rollin’s video introduction (sadly one of the only ones I don’t have in my collection).

The British DVD reportedly has an interview with Rollin, but I have not seen this version so I can’t comment on it. The Region 1 DVD is passable but suffers from a less than stellar visual presentation and even worse only features the English dub of the film. Hopefully someday, if Encore decides to do more Special editions in the future, La Vampire Nue will be given the proper attention it deserves.

The Cinema of Jean Rollin: Le Frisson des Vampires (1971)

Jean Rollin’s third feature film Le Frisson des Vampires, alternately known as Thrill of the Vampires, Shiver of the Vampires and Sex and the Vampire, is one of the key works in his impressive filmography. A perfect melding of all of Rollin’s thematic obsessions, Le Frisson des Vampires is the director’s first masterpiece and one of his greatest achievements.





La Vampire Nue had left Rollin in a bit of a financial crisis and an accident during editing had left him physically traumatized as well. Le Frisson des Vampires can be looked upon as one of the most important films in Rollin’s canon, as not only is one of his most enduring works but it would financially and perhaps spiritually get him out of a minor slump outside circumstances had put him in.





Le Frisson des Vampires became a possibility due to a successful 1971 meeting between Rollin and producer and owner of Films Modernes Monique Natan. Natan had gained not a small amount of infamy in the French film community after turning down several of the most prominent French New Wave film makers for financing, so her faith and support artistically and financially for Rollin was a major coup for the young director. Natan wouldn’t only help with the financing of the film but would also share screenwriting credit with Rollin as well. Rollin would fondly remember in Encore’s booklet for Le Frisson des Vampires that he “had won over the fearsome Monique Natan” and that she in turn became one of his biggest supporters.







While continuing and building on many of the main thematic obsessions that had appeared in his first two films, Le Frisson des Vampires would equally distance itself from them in that it is a much sparer and minimalist piece. While both Le Viol du Vampire and La Vampire Nue had large casts that made them at times a little more convoluted that they needed to be, Le Frisson des Vampires is made up of a cast of just a handful of actors and it is all the more successful for it.





Working in a wonderfully evocative abandoned castle near Soissons Rollin and his crew had rented out, Le Frisson des Vampires is a stylistic triumph on every level imaginable. The photography and lighting of returning cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon is imaginative, inventive, and spectacularly beautiful as is the film’s hippie inspired costuming designs.





The film also benefits greatly from the cutting skills of editor Olivier Gregoire, a newcomer to the Rollin crew. Rollin recalls in Encore’s booklet that the Gregoire was “a very stylish chief editor who ended up as a shaggy-haired hippie much like Sterling Hayden, to whom he bore a likeness.” The talented Gregoire would only work occasionally again after Frisson and only once more with Rollin on the adult feature La Comtesse Ixe in 1976. His work on Frisson, which matches both the ennui and fantastical worlds the film expertly presents, is extremely noteworthy especially in the films climatic moment where his cutting melds in perfectly with the exciting Acanthus score that drives the film.











In front of the camera Rollin assembles one of the best casts of his career. Returning from La Vampire Nue are Michel Delahaye and the unforgettable Marie-Pierre (Pony) Castel. New to Rollins oeuvre are the shockingly beautiful Sandra Julien, New Wave actor Jacques Robiolles, production designer Jean-Marie Durand, stage actress Nicole Nancel and the former Cabaret dancer Dominique, seen here in her unforgettable screen debut. Rollin recalls in Encore’s booklet why he couldn’t get Catherine Castel to return for the film to work with her sister with “I wanted to have my twins for the film but only ‘Pony’ was available…to take her place Natalie Perrey had proposed a young Vietnamese woman (Kuelan Herce), very pretty but who later proved to be a formidable bitch.”









With the cast in place and the castle decorated with many trinkets and decorations brought in by the crew and cast from Paris, Le Frisson des Vampires began shooting and Rollin notes in Virgins and Vampires that it would turn out to be a “much easier shoot for me” as “a certain routine had been established.” He would also credit the success of the film to Renon, whom he would note was “was entirely in tune with me, splashing color in the castle tower as if it were a candy cane.” Rollin’s extremely confident direction combined with Renon’s deliciously striking color scheme makes Le Frisson des Vampires one of the most extraordinary looking films of not only Rollin’s career, but from the early seventies in general.







Taking visual and stylistic points from artists like Magritte and Paul Delvaux (Rollin would mention in Encore’s booklet that, “At the time I was influenced by paintings, mainly surrealist. I tried to compose unusual and strange pictorial frames.”), Le Frisson des Vampires indeed has an overwhelming painterly quality about it. Rollin would also pay homage again to French cinematic auteur Georges Franju, as well has hearken back to such stylistic mavericks as Fritz Lang and especially legendary silent filmmaker Louis Feuillade. Rollin recalls on Encore’s audio commentary to Frisson that the iconic Les Vampires director would have a huge impact on the film and that much of his casting was based on the fact that ”I am looking for Musidora (Les Vampires’ lead actress) through heroines of my films.”

While as Tohill and Tombs correctly point out in Immoral Tales that “Through the judicious use of color and lighting, the film transcends its (budgetary) limitations.”, it is worth remembering that Le Frisson des Vampires does actually start out in black and white. During his audio commentary Rollin flatly stated that he “loves black and white” and that the strange pre-credit opening was “a homage to the early days of cinema, the serial films and to silent movie” and that he wanted “to evoke the old scary movies of Universal.” He also notes perceptively that the famous opening credit sequence, that gives us our first look at the wild ride Renon was preparing to take us on, was designed to look black and white, with only the blood drenched lettering of the titles meant to alert the audience to the color to come.

Originally called ‘Le Sang d’un Oisean (The Blood of the Bird)”, Le Frisson des Vampires is Jean Rollin at his purest. Working as both a fantastical horror film and erotic love story, Frisson is at its most revelatory when it becomes a study of boredom, longing and frustration. Rollin presents life amidst the fantastic colors of Renon as a bit of bore for his participants (check the fascinating opening shot of Castel and Herce in the castle sitting silent at their dinner table) with only the arrival of the so called ‘life sucking vampire’ bringing any kind of real soul to the lives of his players.



Calling the shooting in Virgins and Vampires a “great joy” Rollin injects Le Frisson des Vampires with the idea of “We loved doing things that you usually can’t do in movies.” (Audio commentary) and it is this joyously rebellious notion that makes Frisson such a wonder to behold. This isn’t a filmmaker making films for the masses, but instead a man with a singularly striking vision being as bold and as honest to himself as possible.





Rollin admits in Virgins and Vampires that “All the things I have been reproached for, my visual ticks, were there; candelabras, transparent veils, cemeteries at night, chaste nudity, ruins and eerie lighting.” And yet somehow “Le Frisson des Vampires was a nice break for me: no jeering, no scandals, an almost normal course of events.”





Daniel Bird astutely describes a key to Rollin’s style in his essay Fascination: Jean Rollin Cinematic Bird with “The locus of these dark fantasies remains a singular poetic image. The lithe female vampire whose coming ruptures the chimes of midnight as she slithers out of a clock in the bridal chamber of a lone virtuous virginal bride, whom she proceeds to seduce…the scene embodies the archetypes of the sexual sub-conscious…” It is indeed the images of the mysterious Dominique appearing from the grandfather clock in Sandra Julien’s room before seducing and ravishing her that remain the most famous moments in Le Frisson des Vampires. However it is the many moments of tension that arise between Julien and her new husband that are perhaps the most oddly resonate in the film. Not a filmmaker at all known for realistic touches, these silent moments of sad frustration between two young lovers are just as devastating in their own was as the film’s more noted surrealistic touches.





Describing the film’s more haunting elements in Video Watchdog 59, Scott Grantham would point out how “It’s a testament to the director’s talent and imagination that it enhances, while echoing, concepts and imagery presented in his previous work without serving as a mere variation on a drained theme.” There is indeed something very similar and yet strikingly different about Le Frisson des Vampires when compared to Rollin’s earlier work. It has a real weightiness to it and the film’s layers and subtexts of boredom, isolation and loss become more apparent on repeated viewings. Grantham notes that while it is “Wildly experimental, it’s disconcerting-nay, discombobulating-imagery, upon a precursory glance, seems its greatest drawback but emerges, after multiple viewings, as perhaps its greatest strength.”









The film is just filled with Rollin’s trademark touches, all of which are used to stunning effect. Tohill and Tombs point out that the strange and lovely “castle becomes itself a character in the film.” and Grantham correctly praised the casts efforts as well. Dominique is hauntingly strange and oddly ravishing while Sandra Julien (described by Rollin endearingly as “lovely and naïve”) is just exquisite, and looks as if she was created specifically for this feature. Also worth noting is the amount of improvising that Robiolles and Delahaye did which Rollin remembers in his audio commentary as making a “connection to new wave (that) made it seem avant-garde.”





With its imaginative lighting (Renon brilliantly lights ever room differently) and some of the most vibrant blues and reds in cinema history, its memorable cast, smashing prog-rock score and stylish direction, Jean Rollin’s Le Frisson des Vampires is the director’s first major masterpiece. While it mystifyingly was rejected or ignored again by the majority of the day’s critics, it is pointed out in Immoral Tales that it finally became “a small hit in France and (was) bought again for export.” While not an overwhelming financial success for Rollin, it did allow him to pay off most of the debts from La Vampire Nue and paved the way for his next film, the even more minimal and miraculous Requiem for a Vampire.





Immoral Tales also offered this tragic and interesting footnote to the film. “(Producer) Monique Natan was pleased with the way Frisson had performed commercially and was keen to make another film with Rollin (Docteur Vampire with Sandra)…but before any work was done on the script, Natan died in a car crash and the project was abandoned.” Pity, as Julien only worked sporadically after and never appeared for Rollin again. Comparing her physical presence to future leading lady Brigitte Lahaie on the commentary, Rollin himself seems regretful he never got to shoot this remarkable beauty again.





Home video versions of what Tohill and Tombs calls among “Rollin’s most assured and commercial films” have featured some differences worth noting. Something Weird Video released a version featuring a long extended graveyard sequence that Rollin never meant to be in the film that manages to throw off its very precise pacing in a most damaging way. Video Search of Miami’s so called ‘approved’ version featured a soft and overly dark print that is worth searching out just for Rollin’s camcorder filmed introduction. Redemption's DVD under the title Shiver of the Vampires features a nice print of the film but very little in the way of extras.








While not one of their more loaded up special editions, Encore’s print is stunning and the supplements including the booklet, audio commentary, deleted scenes and slideshow are all extraordinary. Encore’s version is a fitting edition for what Rollin himself admits in their booklet is “For many...my most accomplished film.”

***No doves were harmed in the making of this film, or the writing of this post***