Jean Rollin

Jean Rollin

Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil (3 November 1938 – 15 December 2010) was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his work in the fantastique genre. His career, spanning over fifty years, featured early short films and his achievements with his first four vampire classics Le viol du vampire (1968), La vampire nue (1970), Le frisson des vampires (1970), and Requiem pour un vampire (1971). Rollin's subsequent notable works include La rose de fer (1973), Lèvres de sang (1975), Les raisins de la mort (1978), Fascination (1979), and La morte vivante (1982). His films are noted for their exquisite, if mostly static, cinematography, off-kilter plot progression and poetic dialogue, their playful surrealism and recurrent use of well-constructed female lead characters. Outlandish dénouements and abstruse visual symbols were trademarks throughout his 'dark fantasy' career. Remarkably, in spite of their seeming high production values and precise craftsmanship, his films were made with very little money, and often under crushing deadlines. In the mid-1970s, lack of regular work led the director to direct mostly pornographic films under various pseudonyms, an activity he continued until the early 1980s.

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