La Nuit Des Horloges (2007)

The Night of the Clocks

Rarely have I seen an artist struggle so openly with the question of what their work means in the light of their mortality as in Jean Rollin's penultimate film, La Nuit Des Horloges.  Rollin died three years after making this film, after a long illness, and there can be no doubt that he did not expect to have many years of life ahead of him during the production of this unique movie.

The Night of the Hunted (1980)

Brigitte Lahaie and Dominique Journet

Many of the films of Jean Rollin, especially the early vampire films and gothic masterpiece The Iron Rose, seem to take place in a present haunted by an inescapable past.  His protagonists may begin the films confident professionals, career criminals, or bored intellectuals, but once they set foot outside their comfort zones they're inevitably confronted by the same reality.  Rollin's is a world in which the countryside is dotted with decaying castles and villas, resplendent in their faded glamour.  A seductive world in which death is but a prolonged dusk and curses may haunt for generations.  And most importantly a world in which a beach of rugged beauty that promises the infinite, glimpsed in childhood, becomes a stage for transformation and rebirth.