Jean Rollin Trailers: The Iron Rose (2 Versions)

Here are two different trailers for Jean Rollin's haunting 1973 film La Rose de Fer (The Iron Rose). The first is the more commonly seen one under the title The Crystal Rose and the second is a rarer one in German.

Jean Rollin Posters: The Iron Rose (French Version)

Here is the French design for The Iron Rose. I hope to have an alternate one up soon as well.

Jean Rollin Posters: The Iron Rose (Alternate Version)

Thanks so much to Adam over at the terrific November Sparrow for sharing this incredibly rare poster of The Iron Rose with Fascination. I had never seen it before and I think it is far superior to the more common version I posted earlier. Thanks again to Adam for sharing it.

Jean Rollin Wallpapers: The Iron Rose

These are the sharpest quality wallpapers I could make for The Iron Rose with the DVD I have. My apologies that they are not as sharp as the ones I have been posting here.















Also, a quick note as someone asked me the best way to access these. Click on them and this will take you to Zooomr's site where I keep my photos. From there you will have to click a couple of more times to get to the wallpaper size version (just select the largest size option in the right hand corner) and from there just set it as your background. Thanks!

Jean Rollin Home Video Designs: The Iron Rose

Here are a few DVD designs for The Iron Rose.

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.

The Cinema of Jean Rollin: La Rose de fer (1973)

Perhaps no other major production in Jean Rollin's career has divided fans more than 1973's La Rose de fer. The film, known alternately as The Iron Rose and as The Crystal Rose, is seen by some as one of Rollin's greatest achievements, a haunting poetic production that shows the director at his minimal best, while others, turned off by Rollin's abandoning of his usual Vampiric elements, find the film a failure, and at best a bore. Regardless of one's opinion of the work, two things are for certain, The Iron Rose is one of Jean Rollin's most personal projects, and its failure in 1973 changed the direction of his career drastically.




Jean Rollin was looking for a change in early 1973 after a string of films cornered him into being known as just a maker of erotic vampire films. He recalled to Peter Blumenstock in the pages of Video Watchdog and Virgins and Vampires that, "it was very important for (him) to make a very serious, profound film, far away from the softcore stuff" he had become infamous for. He would go onto to recall that The Iron Rose began life as short story he published earlier in a French publication and, like Rollin's best work, the film retains that strong literary backbone throughout its extremely slim running time.





The Iron Rose, which Rollin admitted to Blumenstock was destined to be a "commercial disaster" from the outset, was financed completely by the ambitious filmmaker even though he knew he, "would never get (the money) back." The fact that Rollin was risking complete financial ruin with a project destined for critical and popular failure makes him a brave, admirable and downright inspiring figure in an industry known for its greed and all around obsession on the dollar.




Of course, Jean Rollin is a smart man and a deal he made before beginning the four week production schedule on The Iron Rose eased his financial troubles but it did cause a shift in his filmmaking career. Rollin admitted to Blumenstock that, "with a safety net in mind" he accepted a deal with Impex Films to, "direct six or seven hardcore films in the next couple of years" under the Gentil and Xavier pseudonyms. So essentially, Rollin was willing to possibly sacrifice the next few years of his artistic life for The Iron Rose, which he told Blumenstock was a project he, "loved very much" and that it was far and away his, "most personal effort."




The Iron Rose is among the most minimal modern films one could possibly imagine. Outside of an opening party sequence and a few scattered one scene appearances throughout the work, the film only features two characters. The storyline, centering on two young lovers finding themselves lost in a huge expansive old cemetery, is so spare that it is nearly non-existent. In his introduction to the film in Virgins and Vampires Rollin admitted that what interested him about the film was the notion of, "a woman's dramatic self-destruction", and that ultimately it was, "a dark and desperate film." Less a successful modern narrative film and more of a poignant tragic poetic work more akin to silent cinema, The Iron Rose is a remarkable work that grows more and more resonate with each passing year. Like Lou Reed's Berlin, that also came out in 1973, The Iron Rose is a work made by an artist not looking to satisfy the time it is in, but is instead looking to transcend it.





Shot in the near deserted city of Amiens, production on The Iron Rose was fraught with difficulties. Rollin had problems throughout the shoot with male star Hughes Quester and was never fully happy with female star Francoise Pascal, even though she finally turns in one of the greatest performances in any Jean Rollin film. The cemetery Rollin chose proved to be an inspired choice though and he recalled in Virgins and Vampires that he, "fun shooting in the cemetery. Wherever we put the camera we immediately found an angle" and that, "a sense of depth was created in the environment of tombs and old iron crosses." He also pointed out that the film proved to be perfect for regular collaborator Jean-Jacques Renon who found the work like, "an animated painting."





While the film features basically only Quester and Pascal, a few familiar Rollin actors pop up. Michele Delesalle can be briefly seen and Requiem for a Vampire co-star Mireille Dargent appears playing what very well might be the ghost of her character in Requiem. Rollin himself also pops ups in a cameo as does regular behind the scenes collaborator Nathalie Perrey, delivering a performance Rollin recalled as very 'moving'. Regarding Nathalie's tearful performance, Rollin pointed out that the tears were apparently for real as she, "had just learned of (French actor) Rene Chauffard’s death" and the film's dedication to him reflects this fact.



Rollin completed his masterful film within the four week shooting schedule and decided to present it to the public at the 2nd Annual Convention of the Fantastique in Paris in mid 1973. Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs wrote on the film's disastrous reception in their essential book Immoral Tales. The film historian's wrote, "The place was packed with French Horror fans" and that Rollin knew he was in trouble when, "The film had hardly begun before the walk-outs commenced. Pretty soon it was obvious that he had a disaster on his hands." The problems didn't end with the intital screening as the critics had their knives sharpened for Rollin and that, "Cinematographe recounted how both he and his film had been roundly booed by the audience, in a way that the writer had never seen a director booed before." Tohill and Tombs went on to write that, "Rollin was devastated" and, "for the next few years Rollin was unable to find backers for any of his personal projects."





I must admit that the more I revisit The Iron Rose, the closer it comes to becoming my favorite Jean Rollin film. It is technically the most imperfect of his early works, with several continuity problems plaguing it, but despite these relatively minor issues I find the film to be an extraordinary and powerful work fueled by Rollin's unbelievable dedication and artistic skill, Jean-Jacques Renon's bold lighting, the eerie and striking score of Pierre Raph, and the strange and quite majestic leading performance of Francoise Pascal. Rollin's film of, "a passionate love that can not be found" is one of his most daring and is admittedly not for everyone. I suspect though that the absolute heart and spirit of Jean Rollin as an artist can be found in the sequences of Francoise Pascal alone in this film, deliriously lost and entranced by something from the past...something that we perhaps cannot see, but that Jean Rollin is able to make us feel.




The Iron Rose has unfortunately not been given the special edition treatment awarded to many of Jean Rollin's other key works. It is available from Redemption in the US in a fairly solid if unspectacular print, and several European versions are out as well, although none of them to my knowledge feature any real film specific extras.

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The Iron Rose: Lobby Card

This rare lobby card for The Iron Rose just popped up on eBay.

The Iron Rose ( A Tribute Video From YouTube)

This is just incredible...thanks to the person who put it together.

Francoise Pascal in Soft Beds, Hard Battles

Just after her extraordinary performance in Jean Rollin's The Iron Rose, Francoise Pascal appeared in a 1974 Peter Sellers comedy from director Ray Boulting entitled Soft Beds, Hard Battles. The film, sometimes called Undercovers Hero, is not one of Sellers better works but Francoise is lovely in it and I thought a collection of screen shots from this, now rather hard to find, film was in order. For those interested in seeing the film, it was available on a Region 2 DVD out of Britain as part of the Peter Sellers Collection but it seems to be currently out of print.