Gathering up titles to view for ICM's best of 2007 poll,I checked to see what French films were made that year. Aware he had done a small number of works in the 2000's,I was intrigued to find a Jean Rollin title in listings for the year,which led to me turning the clock.
View on the film:
Made on such a low budget that clips from his other creations had to be used, writer/directing auteur Jean Rollin & cinematographer Norbert Marfaing-Sintes display a real ambition in making the best of what they have, by stylishly bending the clips to give them a new context, as the archive footage melts into Rollin continuing his silky stylised dream-logic Horror motif, weaving long panning shots and zoom-ins on figures from Rollin's works frozen in time, tracking down grave yards filled with a lingering air of fading ghosts.
Whilst he did make one more film after this, the screenplay by Rollin here breaks down the 4th wall to sketch a poetic impression of Rollin writing his own obituary on film, with Rollin thoughtfully touching on life and cinema, in a number of his most famous characters being frozen in time, cursed to repeat the same actions for eternity. Working with the very good "Ovidie" (whose walk captures the starry eyed dreamy gaze of Rollin's ladies) as a woman searching for "Michel Jean",Rollin opens the viewer to an enticing study of fading images and stars becoming the ghosts of film history, and half completed/remembered ideas/ scripts by "Michel Jean" being lost to the spinning clock of time.
View on the film:
Made on such a low budget that clips from his other creations had to be used, writer/directing auteur Jean Rollin & cinematographer Norbert Marfaing-Sintes display a real ambition in making the best of what they have, by stylishly bending the clips to give them a new context, as the archive footage melts into Rollin continuing his silky stylised dream-logic Horror motif, weaving long panning shots and zoom-ins on figures from Rollin's works frozen in time, tracking down grave yards filled with a lingering air of fading ghosts.
Whilst he did make one more film after this, the screenplay by Rollin here breaks down the 4th wall to sketch a poetic impression of Rollin writing his own obituary on film, with Rollin thoughtfully touching on life and cinema, in a number of his most famous characters being frozen in time, cursed to repeat the same actions for eternity. Working with the very good "Ovidie" (whose walk captures the starry eyed dreamy gaze of Rollin's ladies) as a woman searching for "Michel Jean",Rollin opens the viewer to an enticing study of fading images and stars becoming the ghosts of film history, and half completed/remembered ideas/ scripts by "Michel Jean" being lost to the spinning clock of time.
