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Dir. Jean Rollin
After falling over my words with
the first Jean Rollin film to be
covered, The Shiver of the Vampires
(1971), I have a closer grip of why I like the director's work. It required
asking why I've been drawn to the films I've been interested in, the sort of thing
that would be a question for the whole blog. Feeling that I am too complacent a
person, films that knock me briefly out of this complacency attract my
attention. Political and serious message films fail because they are so easily
absorbed into complacent mindsets. A work, not just cinema, even if it's a joke
or tacky which causes my ears to prick up, or my eyes to widen, or pushes me
into a brief state of confusion or surprise, trying to grip something which is
unconventional and refreshing, is what has affected me the most. And it's been
far more relevant to my real life than most educational or critically important
documents because the irrational or strangeness forces one immediately to look
at things in reality in a new light. Jean
Rollin still isn't that popular, only a few in paracinema in his fan base
compared to other directors, not given his due completely yet. He made erotic
horror movies for the most part, with impoverished budgets and on the fly. He
was more concerned in The Nude Vampire
in mood and an intentionally vague narrative. But watching a film like this,
you cast your eyes to conventional cinema, notice most of it is tedious in
comparison to what curious things happen or take place in his films, even when
they're trying to have serious messages, and realise in my case that Rollin, if a mere director of softcore
lesbian vampire films, was nonetheless able to puncture one's view of how a
film could be put together in a way far more entertaining, because he is
completely unpredictable in his plotting, mixing genre together, and more
rewarding because you aren't a passive viewer to his films, always reacting if
through titillation, displacement by his lengthy shot times or thrown in a loop
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A business organisation believe
they've acquired a female vampire (Caroline
Cartier), the son of the company head (Olivier
Martin) encountering her during her attempt to escape and doing what he can
to try and rescue her. Her own kind make themselves known to help him, planning
their own rescue mission while having interest in his and her being together. This
plot outline is a mere minimalist interpretation, without spoilers, and doesn't
show what tangents take place that may stump some, finding it all sluggish and
fickle, beautiful and utterly enjoyable for me. Okay, let's be honest, as much
of the joy with Rollin for me is the
cultish nature of his work. The unpredictability. The unique take of the genre
tropes. And the thing to not hide from the most, the eroticism, though without
wanting to sound crass unless there's honesty to it, it's impossible not to
feel desire for a person whose beautiful onscreen, in this case as a
heterosexual man for beautiful women, regardless if they're naked or not. As
with the other Rollin films I've
seen, I don't fear having to justify this because the sexuality never feels
like you're gazing at the actresses as mere meat, two dimensional figures for
male viewers, the characters having active participation to the content and of
great importance even if this is one of the more male driven films of Rollin's I've seen.
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With Rollin, both surrealism is an active force in his work, not merely
coincidental, and his participation in a way of French cinema to make genre
decorative and fanciful even when deathly serious is obvious. The first images,
in a lab with men in red hoods and a woman with a blue bag over her head,
caused me to think Rollin had
suddenly turned into George Franju
for a film. Turns out that wasn't far enough to go in terms of genre! From
there you get men in startling animal masks and a suicide cult. Twins (Cathy and Pony Tricot) with ridiculous clothes, consisting of tiny blinds of
discs barely covering their bare torsos, designed for their boss to play with
erotically, along with Velcro skirts, during telephone conversations. Vampires
welding burning torches for once, not the usual way around, storming people
hiding in the library of a mansion in the countryside, and a plot twist that
pushes the film into metaphysical sci-fi by way of Rollin's obsession with beaches. His style is disarming for those
expecting the tropes he is using here - vampires, crime thrillers, even the
Parisian crime stories of a Louis
Feuillade - to be depicted as they are usually, his slow matter-of-fact
nature, with mostly monotone acting, (the Robert
Bresson comparison isn't that absurd as it may sound to most people),
disarming the conventions and alienating those who want what is usually wanted
in these films. But it's been inherent in French cinema, including Louis Feuillade for that matter, to both
have mystery in their takes on genre and idiosyncratic in how the material
around direct plot points are expanded upon and made of the most interest.
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In Rollin's case, the plot, continually talked of in dialogue, is
concentrating on the material around it or makes the plot expedition part of
the tangents by making it more of a texture than something of the more
importance. Put it like this, in a one example of this which pretty much sums
up Rollin's deliberate style, the
moment where the protagonist's friend is brought into the events, over a phone
call, is usually a minute in most films. Here, the concern before is of the
camera being seduced by the friend's lover, a voluptuous black woman who is
completely naked, the camera in extreme close-up on body parts, not directly
and pornographically, but glancing at her as a goddess and a moving statue, and
slightly further back shots to take in her languid expressions to it. Purely titillation
on the surface, but as she gazes at the camera out at the audience, playful as
she cups herself, pulling us in with her own intent, and wanting to seduce the
friend, Rollin, having this play out
for a few good minutes before a phone call interrupts the pair being able to
sleep together finally, the protagonist needing his friend's help, is as concerned
with mood of a sensual moment and everything else surrounding plot events as
well as when the phone call takes place. Moments, not just the erotic ones,
play out longer than they usually do even in the Italian genre films, basking
in the inconsequential moments for other filmmakers. The plot is a game which
is to be taken seriously but the participants are as much allowed to rest in
the middle of important events, the obvious exception being when guns are shot
or someone is stabbed, but immediately after, as in an opening sequence, a
pause can take place, a lengthy, hesitant one, before a specific person
realises they need to escape.
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This plays out in the whole of The Nude Vampire, the contemporary
setting of urban areas, office buildings, and lavish homes and mansions against
the gothic and Parisian aesthetics creating a peculiar contrast. Everything
feels new and oddly attractive because of it, going along knowing that it's a
flush of motifs in a continuous dream, like Rollin's
films are. Befittingly like the Italian-US mindbender The
Visitor (1979) - [reviewed here] - found, the importance of corridors and
rooms, exterior urban streets and office buildings, as characters is immensely
useful to add to the atmosphere of a film, always with an anticipation for a
tuned-in viewer of a character stumbling onto a secret behind a door or a
potential threat. As Rollin viewed
women as even more of interest and of more importance in his films, though male
characters as here are treated with importance too, anyone can have a gun
pointed on another person, anyone can suddenly appear, of any gender, and be a
being of importance and centre of a scene's importance. This means, as well
there being no crass gender archetypes to get in the way, that things are much
more interesting in Rollin's films
for me because he's yet to get predictable, and that's far more a good night's
entertainment as well as art because, even when repeating motifs, he is
catching me off-guard and bringing out something exciting or an image immensely
surreal in each new scene. Here, by the ending, he stumped me in taking his
usual vampire film and turning the vampire plot, in his second ever feature
film, on its head, the metaphysical science fiction, suddenly introduced with
an amusing inclusion rather than pointlessly, undermining the vampire part of
the film's title! The greater aspect of this is, barring the exceptions in his
filmography, he rifted on the same types of horror film in all I've seen but so
far has always made details different in each. The result that even in
repetition, it never feels like he is becoming redundant.
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Abstract Rating
(High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
Out of the two Rollin films so far covered on the blog
in general, The Nude Vampire is the
more "abstract". While The
Shiver of the Vampires is closer to Rollin's
conventional style - minimalistic in plot - it yet has more of a
"mainstream" tone, a gothic vampire film plot in a Rollin movie. This by having a more
wildly detailed story which shifts gears makes it more unpredictable. It's
avant garde score by Yvon Serault,
from noise to melodic pieces, is even more unpredictable than the moody prog
rock of the other film. This feels a more freewheeling work which precariously
juggles, even throws in, content abruptly, improvised, as it goes along that
could've collapsed the whole film, but with an ending that unravels how the
film starts, it stands out more. The more contemporary urban locations barring
the last quarter in the mansion, while The
Shiver of the Vampires was very gothic, adds to the abstract nature, horror
twisted through then-modern day reality, to the point it becomes unconventional
again. The openly mysterious and surreal ending, nearing the ballpark of David Lynch of a distance travelled into
a new dimension between space, even with a thick set of curtains to go through
guarded by a pleasant elderly man and women, is much more "quirky"
and unpredictable than that of the other film, still going against expectations
but still kept in genre traditions.
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A Cinema of the Abstract movie?
Obviously. The question instead
is what'll happen as I connect his filmography together. Will any film feel too
ordinary within it? Will new pleasures be found in the films I've already seen
reflected through those I've just watched? And as for this film in particular?
I found it immensely enjoyable.
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