With what seems to be a major renaissance of interest in Rollin films in the works, it was especially sad and shocking to me to read that Rollin is now preparing to make his last film, LA NUIT TRANSIFGUREE (THE TRANSFIGURATED NIGHT).  Cinema Nocturna announced the sad news last week after it was first reported by the official Jean Rollin newsletter, ENFANT TERRIBLE.  The news is not quite as bad as it could be; as far as I have been able to learn, Rollin's health is still holding up and is not the direct reason for his decision to stop making films.  The consensus appears to be that he wishes to focus now on his career as a writer, a pursuit that has been overshadowed by his constant efforts as a director, but which did produce the excellent serial novels that TWO ORPHAN VAMPIRES was based on.  We must respect Rollin's decision to leave the film world behind- while at the same time hoping that he will someday change his mind.  He has given us countless hours of enjoyment and has received far too little thanks and respect for his efforts.  His fans will support him in every and any venture, and he will continue to be loved and never forgotten.  With that lengthy introduction now complete- and I apologize to the casual reader for my excess of passion which prompted such a long soliloquy- I now present and in-depth look at Rollin's career.  It has been a "long and bumpy ride", filled with much controversy, misunderstanding, bad breaks and worse luck, but which left a legacy of a dozen or more superior works that revolutionized the modern horror film.  The films speak for themselves, but they need an audience.  My task is to convince you that you need to see them, that they may not change your life but will definitely change your conception of what a modern horror film is, that they are literally the most fantastic dreams and images transferred to celluloid, that they are remarkable and without equal.

Jean Michel Rollin le Gentil was born on November 3, 1938, in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.  He grew up in a family of artists; his father was an actor and a theatre director, his younger brother Olivier is an actor and a painter, and Rollin grew up with bedtime stories told by French surrealist author Georges Bataille- a close friend of the family.  It was no surprise then that from a very early age Rollin dreamed of directing films.  While fulfilling his National Service in the Army, he worked on recruitment films, which allowed him to learn the basics of the editing process. In the years following his discharge from the Army, Rollin held positions at animation and newsreel companies, and eventually became an editor at a TV station.  At the same time Rollin also worked as an extra on films, designed sets and costumes for theatre productions, wrote and submitted scripts, and applied for assistant director positions when they were available.  As a result, Rollin quickly made himself well known in the Parisian film community, meeting such directors as Luis Bunuel and Georges Franju. 

As soon as he possibly could, Rollin began to simply get behind a camera and shoot his own films.  Thus, his filmography contains a series of short works, an unfinished full length film, and a political documentary.  The first of these, 1958's LES AMOURS JAUNES (THE YELLOW LOVES), was a black and white piece with a group of his friends as the actors and was shot with a 35 mm camera borrowed from the newsreel company.  The film was based on a poem by Tristan Corbiere, a poet favored by Verlaine and Rollin himself for his tragic yet romantic life and the nautical themes of his work.  A similar effort resulted in 1961's CIEL DU CUIVRE (COPPER SKY), another black and white piece.  By 1963, Rollin had made enough contacts in the film world to attempt his first full length feature, L'ITINERAIRE MARIN (THE SAILOR'S JOURNEY), whose script he wrote himself.  It was to be produced by ABC, a production company that he and his brother Olivier had just founded with their own savings.  The film sounded promising; Rollin had cast Gaston Modot (Bunuel's L'AGE D'OR) and Rene-Jaques Chauffard, who had collaborated with the novelist and screenwriter Marguerite Duras.  Unfortunately, filming proved to be more expensive than anticipated, and funds ran short before the film was completed.  The final blow to the project  was the death of Modot, after which it was never completed.

The following year found the politically active Rollin in Spain, shooting a documentary film for the anti-Franco resistance movement, 1964's VIVRE EN ESPAGNE (TO LIVE IN SPAIN).  It's said that Rollin and his crew were nearly captured by military police before making it safely back to Spain.  At this time Rollin also began to pursue another of his passions: writing.  He began to frequent a circle of intellectuals centered around Parisian publisher Eric Losfeld, who agreed to publish a novel Rollin had written entitled LES PAYS LOINS (THE FAR COUNTRY).  The novel was never ultimately published, but instead became Rollin's last short film.  LES PAYS LOINS contained many of the themes that we now associate with Rollin's body of work.  It is the story of a lost soul, an outsider- in this case a man trapped in a "Kafkaesque" parallel universe in which everything about his life has undergone a subtle yet definite change.  Rollin was also exploring two other avenues of expression that would both have a huge influence on his films.  He became interested in the transformation of the comic book to that of a serious medium of literature.  In 1967, with Eric Losfeld and Nicolas Devil, he created a comic, "The Saga of Xam", which was revolutionary in its time for its graphic style and strong sexual content. Similarly, Rollin was also rediscovering his lifelong love for French pulp paperbacks, which like their American "noir" and Italian "giallo" counterparts, had been widely popular in the first half of the twentieth century.  One of these pulp authors, Gaston Leroux, so impressed Rollin that he wrote a long article- in fact, a full length study of his work- in Losfeld's popular magazine, "Midi-Minuit Fantastique".  Gaston's novel, "La Poupee Sanglante (The Bleeding Doll)", was to be a strong influence on Rollin's second film, LA VAMPIRE NUE (1969).