La Rose de Fer (1972) - Jean Rollin

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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126004/ (Film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Rollin (Director)

Sinopsys

A young couple that went on a date in La Madeleine cemetery in Amiens, in search of privacy, becomes lost after nightfall.

Trailer created by me using the original film's music, overlapping the dialogues.



Curious Facts



The gothic french cemetery in La Madeleine, Amiens, where this picture was filmed, is in itself very famous and creepy (or lovely if you apreciate gothic art). The french cemetery in under the official cathegory/designation of a Romantic Cemetery, thet entered service in 1817.



There are cemetery guided tours, and famous persons like Jules Verne are buried there.

It hosts beautiful gothic sculptures...



French wikipedia page: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimeti...e_%28Amiens%29



A sinister design feature of this cemitery, key to the plot of this film, is the existence of underground family crypts, only accessible by an iron trapdoor and vertical ladder.

Note: If I have the time I will later write my opinion (it's a good one), and I would also like to talk about this strange french film director (I respect him). This work is considered his best film.

Note II: As far as I know, these gothic romantic cemeteries (like the famous Pere Lachaise in Paris) are a french thing and design. There are no such cemeteries in Portugal or in Spain (that I know of).



A macabre romance



This is a cautionary tale directed at young men, with all the story elements of the ancient greek writer Aesop, or the middle age european folk tales. It's a male version of "Little Red Riding Hood".



I consider this film very good all-around, and without flaws.

It has an original plot, very unpredictable, that grabs your attention. Good acting both natural and realistic, an excellent cinematography and a great musical score.

The plot is very similar to an Edgar Alan Poe type story. So if you like Edgar Alan Poe's stories, I highly recommend this film, and I shall speak no more.




Jean Rollin

Wikipedia (very good reading): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Rollin


"Rollin prior to receiving the Life Time Achievement Award at the Montreal Fantasia Film Festival on 15 July 2007" in Wikipedia.

This director earned money by making porno films in the 1970's, and with those profits he would save money to make serious gothic films, the best he could, with themes that he liked, such as lesbian vampires and old french castles. For him these films were art and didn't make a profit.

He was a lover of Cinema, but he lacked skill and know-how.

In May 1968, there was a revolution attempt in France, and Paris went into a sort of lock-down, with no new films arriving at the Cinemas.

France back then had a Cinema Law like South Korea had, until Barrack Obama threatened them to bow down to a Free Trade Agreement, allowing American films full share of South Korean Cinemas.

Barrack Obama, also acted as a marionette of the Hollywood studio owners, and threatened the European Union into an EU-USA F.T.A. For example I live in Portugal and we produce the famous Port Wine, Barrack Obama threatened my country into accepting the sale of California made Port Wine in the European Union, because my country is small and doesn't have nuclear missiles, we bowed down.

There was only one country that veto'd the Obama threat to the EU: France!

France didn't want american cheese sold as "Camembert" or american bubble wine sold as "Champagne", and neither did it want Hollywood to have 100% share of french cinemas, because that would damage the french film industry.

After the french veto, the EU started secret negotiations with the USA (which go against the transparency values of the EU), but luckily for the rest of the world, Donald Trump was elected President of the USA, and he stopped american bullying and meddling in european affairs.



So... back to Paris... in May of 1968!

In 1968, the french kids loved Hollywood films, that were very profitable for the Parisian cinema owners. The theater owners in Paris had to abide by french law, and show a percentage of french films for every american blockbuster that sold-out the french theaters, In 1968 "Planet of the Apes", "Bullit" and "2001" were released!

The problem was that there weren't enough 1968 french films to fill the quota, so a cinema owner gave a little money to Jean Rollin, who knew jack **** about film making, and jack had just left town, like the americans say.

"Here! take this tiny amount of money and make a crappy film, so long as it is french!"

Jean Rollin was very happy, his dream had come true. The young filmmaker did the best he could with passion. But the film sucked, and people threw objects at the theater screen in protest.

Because of the political uprising, this crappy "Rape of the Vampire" was one of the few films available in Paris, for weeks...



This film is horrible, with a plot similar to a comic book for 8-year olds, however the filmmaker Jean Rollin never understood why that movie sucked, he died believing he did a great job, and that people simply didn't understand the film. But I get it... He wanted to transpose a comic book script to the big screen, with the bonus of showing naked female vampires. The movie still sucks on so many levels...

Here is the official trailer:



But I really admire and respect Jean Rollin, for starters I enjoy naked lesbian vampires as a theme, but that doesn't grant my respect, because it's simply a matter of taste. What really makes me respect the man is that he saved money in his daily job, to pay for the theatrical artistic erotic/gothic films he wanted, at a loss of profit, just like in the communist eastern european bloc, but without taking crap or directives from the governments.

However his daily job was making porno movies, he did try once to make a porno movie with a storyline and with cinema quality, called "Phantasmes", I have a clip, carefully made as not to show any porno content, that I uploaded 3 years ago on Vimeo, and showed it in two portuguese serious film forums, without any issue:



I made some trailers for two of his other films...

1997's "Les deux orphelines vampires" (the two vampire orphan girls). This later film has some poetic elements that I enjoyed. It reminds me of "Interview with a Vampire", but not as good and with some flaws.



Fascination (1979), I also enjoyed this film.



I don't know what else to say, just wanted to give an idea of the work, of an original film director, out of the box...