"La Nuit des Horloges" was not the last film by Jean Rollin ("Le masque de la Méduse" was), but it sums up his visions in such a unique way that it surely is his testament as a director. Do not watch this movie if you are not familiar with many of his previous works, for it wouldn't make sense to you then. Rollin could be accused of vanity for creating "La Nuit des Horloges" as a homage to himself, but for the audience, it rather is a reflection of past years where many of the old actors appear again, for example Dominique from "Requiem For A Vampire", Natalie Perrey from "Lost in New York" and Jean-Loup Philippe from "Lips of Blood". In that way, it is a movie for fans in the first place, happy memories of graveyards and vampires, you do know what I mean. The important movies are still the ones from the 1970s, but this is the cherry on top. "La Nuit des Horloges" shows a young woman on the traces of writer and director Michel Jean (who stands for Rollin, obviously), and she finds items like the iron rose from "La Rose de Fer" as well as books, the strange mixture of pulp and poetry that was typical of Rollin's influences. Ghosts appear and invite her into the big clock to see more of Michel Jean's world. The lead role is played with sufficient gravity by Ovidie, a tattooed dark haired goth lady, and when I innocently scanned the net what other movies she did before, I found that her works, let's put it this way, are pretty much in line with Brigitte Lahaie's. Jean Rollin certainly had a concept there, like in everything else, and he will be missed.
3 Reviews
Rollin back the years.
morrison-dylan-fan19 November 2019
Warning: Spoilers
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.
Rollin's Cat In the Brain
BandSAboutMovies13 January 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Ovidie, who stars in this film, was a "very active militant feminist" when she started her adult career. At first, she thought that porn was filled with injustice for women but was shocked by how the women were powerful sexual beings. Seeing how that worked with her feminist ideals, she started acting and said, "I am interested in these sort of experiences not just because I am perverse, which as you have seen I can be when I want to be. No, it's because not everyone can achieve them." After a year as a performer, she started directing movies by women for women, just like the adult store that she owns, as well as crossing over to mainstream in movies like All About Anna, in which she performed explicit and unsimulated oral sex on mainstream actress/singer Gry Bay.
That's who Jean Rollin picked to play Isabelle, the heroine of his next to last film and this makes sense, so much sense, as so much of his work has been about the juxtaposition and duality of the virginal and the sexual. He's a man who strove to make fairy tales about vampires, castles and beaches and yet had to pay for them by changing his name and directing dirty movies. Yet no matter what he makes, there they exist, the innocent and the profane.
Isabelle has inherited a home from her uncle, who was a writer and filmmaker. Within that home, she discovers the lost memories of a dead man, a place forever haunted by not only his characters and fantasies but the movies and moments of Rollin.
So while this has a title that means The Night of the Clocks and that sounds vaguely Italian, you should also know that this is Rollin's very own Cat In the Brain as he brings back the people and times and memories of a man who at the age of seventy is looking back at the struggles of attempting to create myth that can last.
So Ovidie steps into the shoes of Brigitte Lahaie, another actress that Rollin took from adult and found his perfect woman and then brings back so many images and feelings and yet also has so many new things, like the wax sculptures that show how the body decays, surely a fact that was weighing on him. Indeed, Rollin had but three years left on Earth when he made this movie. And that wax museum was to be all that he was to film, but he was so inspired when he saw it that this film came from it, financed all with his own money.
Between the moment when the clock coffin catches on fire and realizing that this was shot in the same cemetery as The Iron Rose, not to mention how much fun everyone seems to be having, I have to confess tearing up a few times. It's disconcerting to watch someone's entire film output within just a few days and then have this resolution, although Rollin would make one more movie. I have no idea what the word for this emotion is. It's sadness mixed with happiness that it happened. Maybe it's just life.
That's who Jean Rollin picked to play Isabelle, the heroine of his next to last film and this makes sense, so much sense, as so much of his work has been about the juxtaposition and duality of the virginal and the sexual. He's a man who strove to make fairy tales about vampires, castles and beaches and yet had to pay for them by changing his name and directing dirty movies. Yet no matter what he makes, there they exist, the innocent and the profane.
Isabelle has inherited a home from her uncle, who was a writer and filmmaker. Within that home, she discovers the lost memories of a dead man, a place forever haunted by not only his characters and fantasies but the movies and moments of Rollin.
So while this has a title that means The Night of the Clocks and that sounds vaguely Italian, you should also know that this is Rollin's very own Cat In the Brain as he brings back the people and times and memories of a man who at the age of seventy is looking back at the struggles of attempting to create myth that can last.
So Ovidie steps into the shoes of Brigitte Lahaie, another actress that Rollin took from adult and found his perfect woman and then brings back so many images and feelings and yet also has so many new things, like the wax sculptures that show how the body decays, surely a fact that was weighing on him. Indeed, Rollin had but three years left on Earth when he made this movie. And that wax museum was to be all that he was to film, but he was so inspired when he saw it that this film came from it, financed all with his own money.
Between the moment when the clock coffin catches on fire and realizing that this was shot in the same cemetery as The Iron Rose, not to mention how much fun everyone seems to be having, I have to confess tearing up a few times. It's disconcerting to watch someone's entire film output within just a few days and then have this resolution, although Rollin would make one more movie. I have no idea what the word for this emotion is. It's sadness mixed with happiness that it happened. Maybe it's just life.
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