Latest / Outskirts Film Podcast / #018 - Jean Rollin: Sapphic Vampires, Lyrical Eroticism & Fantastique Decadence

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#018 - Jean Rollin: Sapphic Vampires, Lyrical Eroticism & Fantastique Decadence · Outskirts Film Podcast

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Outskirts Film Podcast, folks.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Oiksofolu and I'm joined by my dear co-hosts.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_06: I am Christopher Small.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_06: Hi, I'm Alan Swiller.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: As the month of October kicks off, we decided to experiment a little with our subjects and curate a Shoctober focus for this episode and the two upcoming ones.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: However, as you'll discover very shortly, the filmmaker we'll be focusing on today has very little to do with shocks.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: To a certain extent, maybe with thrills and chills, but they exist in a subdued hallucinatory register.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: In a similar vein to our previous episodes on Lucio Fulci and Valerien Worovczyk, whose works flirted with what is known as the EuroTrash or Eurocult Canon, we'll be talking about Jean Roland, who I think Alonso and Christopher will agree to is far too idiosyncratic to be identified through any specific genre label.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Roland's audiovisual universe is much easier to recognize than to imitate or compare with other horror and fantasy authors, a filmography predominantly revolving around supernatural figures, most recognizably vampires.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: His films often take place in eerie, remote locations, desolate countryside landscapes, sinister castles and mansions, and if not graveyards, beaches that assume an equally dreamlike and nightmarish quality through Roland's atmospheric treatment.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Roland's cinema is one of mood, vibes, and emotional states that remain beyond the reach of logic and reason, meaning that classic narrative progression has little priority in his realm.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: However, this is not to say that his films are nonsensical.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: On the contrary, his aesthetic spectrum drove on a carefully cultivated blend of surrealism, romanticism, pop fiction, and popular literature.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Born into a family of artists, Roland grew up in an intellectually rich and influential environment.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: His father was an actor who worked with prominent figures such as Marguerite Duras, while his mother, a model, had affairs with Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, and was with friends with Raymond Queno, Jacques Prevert, and Jean Cocteau.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yet these influences seemed to have shaped Roland only indirectly on a subconscious level that he would come to recognize much later, according to interviews he gave, before the revelation he experienced upon discovering the films of Bunuel and Cocteau in a joint screening, his cinophilia was largely limited to the American genre cinema and serials.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: After his first experiments behind the camera with his short films Les Amorjon, Ciel de Kivre, Roland decided to take the leap into future filmmaking with L'ITinéraire Marin, a project whose dialogue was written with the help of Marguerite Duras.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: However, this ambitious undertaking remained unfinished, as distributors showed no interest in helping with complete the film.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: The tide turned for Roland five years later when a distributor approached him to direct a mid-length film to accompany the release of Sam Newfield's Dead Man Walk.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yet what was initially conceived as a 30-minute project evolved, thanks to an American producer, into an atypical future comprising two parts that were, let's say, loosely connected.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Upon its release, Le Viol de Vampire already bore many of the hallmarks that would come to define Roland's moody and breathtakingly elusive style through the 1970s.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: The works that would later come to be regarded as his masterpieces, at least for our point of view, reached only limited audiences within genre cinema.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And like many filmmakers struggling financially at that time, he eventually turned to pornography during the second half of the 1970s.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he never fully reconciled his hardcore ventures with the fantasy universe that remained his true artistic domain.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Although we'll mostly be discussing his most prominent works in the 70s, Rodin continued directing until 2010 and gradually developed a more melancholic and metaphysical late style.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: While these final films may not reach the artistic heights of his earlier work, they're far from the kind of deteriorating or desperate comeback attempts that often characterize late careers.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: With the arrival of videotape and later DVD culture, Roland was first recognized as an auteur abroad before being rediscovered in France.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But even today, that recognition remains largely confined to genre enthusiasts and has yet to be fully integrated into the broader canon of cynophilia.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to start by asking: do you think Jean Roland is an auteur?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_06: Roland to me was always presented at least as some sort of like auteur, and uh the most interesting thing to me at least was like I came to know his work as the like lesbian vampire filmmaker.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: His brand kind of eventually became that.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_06: So his films kind of also have like a second life, like a second autourist life as well, as some sort of accidental queer filmmaker, in with even within the sense of like uh the eroticism and like the fantastic elements of his films.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_06: But I think the specific amalgamation of those elements does do make his films like very, very distinctive and very unique also in how even within his own career, and you see him like exploring those, I guess, like same salacious topics in different forms as his career progresses.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_05: I believe it was Felipe Furtado uh writing on Letterboxd about one of these films, and he described Roland as a kind of great amateur filmmaker.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_05: And that word amateur, which I hadn't really thought about, kind of stuck in my mind a lot.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_05: Because on some level, Jean Roland is kind of the classic author.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, there are all these signposts in all of his films, there are these actresses that he works with again and again, that when you see them, it's kind of pointing at the TV.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_05: These genres, these like images find repetitions throughout his whole career.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_05: On the other hand, part of what makes these films very exciting for me is this really raw, amateur-ish quality that you're never quite sure if Jean Roland was really aware of the movie that he was making.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_05: One minute it seems hyper-intentional, the next it's like he has no clue what he's doing.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_05: And this kind of pendulum swing between those two extremes is is what makes these films I think very distinctive.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_05: So that's a long-winded way of saying, I guess, that there's like two faces of Roland, one an extreme author and one a total amateur, and it's the kind of joining of the two that I find interesting.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_05: This sense that they're just kind of inventing the movie as they're going along.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_05: Even if that wasn't true, but you just feel this kind of organic kind of assembling of elements that each shot becomes like its own self-contained universe in some way.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_05: You know, they s they swing between these extremes of boredom and kind of you know, just the greatest shots you've ever seen in your life, sometimes seconds apart.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_05: So there's just always this sense that of a kind of search in front of the camera.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_05: Like that's the starting point, kind of building a movie out of these sensations that you're able to uh assemble in a moment.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_06: The film that I think is one of his most popular ones, Fascination.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_06: In that film, I can almost think of it like uh an excuse just to get like a Brigitte Lahe, like kind of like uh swinging a sight in front of the camera, and that like element, okay, we have the castle and we have uh Brigitte Lahe and a site.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, this is like a very uh revealing Rim Reaper kind of outfit.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, and that's just like the excuse to make the whole film around there.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_06: It's like, yeah, we'll just throw in some like criminals, I guess, and they'll find this castle.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_06: But the main thing is just like very uh specific, kind of pure, almost like a seducting element of something you feel compelled to capture, and then you figure the rest of the film as you go, essentially.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I agree with what you were saying, and I wanted to add something uh from a documentary that I saw Jean Roland, the stray dreamer, Jean Roland le rêveur égaret, and this I want to like um highlight this idea of dream.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dream dream logic is I think uh an important part of his uh style as well, because in one of the interviews he says that he doesn't want to repeat uh a sh uh a scene because when a scene is shot, you have the robust, you have the like the most direct version of that scene.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if you like take do another take, you would start noticing some mistakes, errors, and he doesn't want that.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: He wants to do the uh the purest, the the robust form of one scene.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a structure that he tries to give to these dreams uh through writing, through fiction, because he also mentions that uh many of these scenes, especially the the beach scenes that uh we f find in many of his films, that comes from his dreams.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like there's also a paradoxical quality in that, like trying to curate your dreams, but also trying to give that spontaneous uh natural quality to it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_05: His first film, uh The Yellow Lovers, is a short film that he made.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's shot entirely on that beach in Dieppe, kind of just like shots of moody people on the beach with a voiceover reading this poem by uh or poetry by Tristan Corbier, who's a mid-19th century poet.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, on one hand, it's kind of proposing a bit more of a kind of serious-minded version of this filmmaker that wasn't to be.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_05: On the other hand, it's totally Roland.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_05: There are these kind of kind of monstrous, uh, violent images, hand-drawn sketches.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I don't think you I don't think the film tells you where those came from, but I mean I sort of assumed that they were Roland.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_05: It kind of gave me an insight into his films because that's really how, for lack of a better word, images are in his films.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_05: As Alonzo was saying about the scythe in um fascination.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_05: It's almost like a sketchbook, in a way, you know, like he has these images in his head, and the images is what comes first, and then the film comes around that, you know, it assembles around these basic images.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: So you see that, you know.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_05: I I I didn't make notes about what they were, but you know, you see uh a woman with some horrible head wound, and out of the head wound is coming some monstrous thing, or it's some some stuff like that.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_05: So it it really gave me insight, and even at that early stage, that's how he was thinking, you know, that you start a film with yes, you have these kind of uh accoutrements of plot or inspiration from poetry or music or whatever it may be, but at the end of the day, the kind of core of the film are these images that maybe they came to you in dreams, or I don't know, you were just doodling, but they came out of your head and they should somehow be the center of the film.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_06: You mentioned the poetry by uh Colbert, I think it's interesting because like the whole like link he has with uh traditional fantastic, I think, is also something that uh keeps uh reappearing, like when his films are discussed uh with uh again, like this kind of strand of uh French 19th century literature which essentially is set within the world of realism, but there's like something like uh fantastical and like a dream-like, as Soiko was described in the atmospheres that a spirit world kind of intercedes with the real world and fantasmic world happening.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_06: Most famously, I guess, with uh Balzac and Guillaume Demo Sapant and uh Gauthier.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_06: Uh but also it's interesting because I don't feel like the thematically like Roland's films really work like that.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_06: Like it has like the veneer of like the world of fantastic because it has like uh living dead and like vampires, but at the same time, like the symbolism and perhaps the existentialism I wouldn't say is necessarily there most of the time.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_05: It's almost just too coherent an idea, no?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, exactly.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_06: Like yeah, even to describe I guess like most of the vampire films, like essentially like plotless in some sense.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_06: To me, at least he's kind of embracing fantastic and uh approaching it to like purely visual like language, uh, which again makes for this like weird pacing where we're kind of like alluding to.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_06: But to me, that weird pacing is kind of like and we all into like this amateuriness, is this like accidental or not?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_06: But to me, that's kind of his durational stake, just like seeing people wandering for like minutes and on like without really knowing when the scene is gonna end.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_06: I can't really understand his films without that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: His vampires are so unrelated to what we see in a vampire canon and in symbol in in terms of symbolism, in terms of what they represent, are so uh detached from what we learn or new vampires.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't feel like he's trying to reference, like give references to those canon either.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: His vampires, or if if they are vampires, if if they're like mutants at something else, obviously, or like they just like they can also be aristocrats drinking blood.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but his vampires basically feel displaced temporally on or spatially, like they they they they I feel like they're in exile.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like they're just like they fe uh as if their time has revolved and they ch they still tr try to survive.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is also in relation to the canon of fantastic.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_06: Right, like in particular in like those early vampire films from like uh Rape of the Vampire, I think, up until Lips of Blood.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_06: Uh particularly like the first three three or four of those films, The Node Vampire and Heroes of the Vampire, there's not really like any like cohesive lore at at all.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_06: And they kind of bring this like disruptive element, this like seduction to the films.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_06: I think what that's what's interesting to him mostly, uh to this like otherness of the characters and uh naturally like they got whole like gothic atmosphere around them.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_06: The assumption, as you were saying, like in this like meta-narrative way of like what people associate with vampires, which is like usually this this like psychosexual element around them, and he just like plays up on that, on the like the primal element of those images.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_06: It could be vampires, but it could be like ghouls or they could be like uh ghosts.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_06: To him, it's just like the the iconography of those things.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even the the the films that are called like the nude vampire, for example, it's not about a vampire.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we because we end up uh learning that this is actually a new race, a mutant race that's gonna like take over the world.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry for spoilers, but so even like it's contraintuitive to call the film the nude vampire when there's no vampire in the film because it's the the evil forces that think that those people or those people are actually vampires and experiment on them, but they call themselves a mutant race.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um, in the commentary that I listened, they also uh see them as the the young generation, the counterculture, which is a way of interpreting obviously these characters.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But and in fascination, it's also revealed to be that these aristocrats are not vampires, they just like to to battle anemia, this is something that their doctors prescribed, and they just like had this fucked up habit of oh, why not we just like find praise, male human praise, and just like kill them and like and drink their blood.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the it the even the vampire per se is not there, so it's just like flirting and toying with the the idea uh that are attached to vampire sexuality, aristocracy, and other otherness.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's more like a outline of the concept, and he just like takes and adapts in whatever he where in whichever way he wants.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: As you said, for him it's just this grab bag of possibilities that could be something like two blonde, pale, loner women kind of guiding the narrative, or in um Shiver of the Vampires, I found it quite interesting that there are these uh vampiric images that he pushes kind of to the point of parody.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_05: There are these couple of moments in that film too that really stand out in my mind where the the kind of main vampire from the the coven of vampires uh she she appears.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_05: And the first time is when she comes out of the clock, which is one of the most famous images in in Roland, that she she literally steps out of the door of the grandfather clock, is again one of those images that's like you see Roland putting his cards on the table, like you know, are you gonna take this seriously?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_05: If so, let's go for a ride.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_05: You know, also lips of blood.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_05: One of my favorite things in that film is the ending where the two vampires get into a coffin, wooden coffin, and just go out to sea again from that that beach that was mentioned earlier.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just such a weird image, you know, because it's it's not a coffin that's really designed to be going on the on the water.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's not so it just sort of floats there and crashes against the side of the these wooden pillars in the water and so on.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_05: So it's just as you said, for him, it's just uh an opportunity, you know.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_05: With a vampire comes a coffin, with a vampire comes a surprise appearance, with a vampire comes a crucifix, with a vampire comes a sort of lacy dress where you can see that they're not wearing any clothes underneath.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that's so for him, that's what the vampire genre is, I guess.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_05: Because I feel like that from what I I I'm not as kind of up to date on his biography as Urku, but as I understood it, these first films were not very successful, right?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_05: Now it's very easy to see them as this kind of coherent kind of set of cult objects, but I guess they weren't really successful, and from what I understand, the Iron Rose was kind of the film where he sold everything and financed it himself, and it's suitably extremely low budget.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_05: But it's this is kind of very again, it's another sort of Rosetta Stone, I would say.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Iron Rose was very so attached to the the the atmosphere, the landscape that it's shot and also the time, because I thought like in a very restrained uh space and time, he uses all the uh capacities of that space offers through the um to the before they come to this graveyard that they are uh end up being shot in.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's this shot of um sunset or the very bright colours of sun, either it's dawn or sunset, because we don't know exactly when they shot the actual scene, but he uses these uh colours and light so beautifully that it just ends up being the most important thing in that scene, not what they're doing at that given m moment, but just how the colors reflect on the yellow sweater that she's wearing, on the like bright red uh sweatshirt he is wearing.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just becomes um matter of color, light.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing that really attracted me in that film was this very pure elementary forms being so highlighted in a film.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_06: It's interesting because I feel like he's following basically the same impulse in some of like the early vampires films.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_06: But in this case, I guess like the graveyard as this perhaps space itself charged with uh iconographic possibilities, as we see in the film with just like very obvious things that I guess like he really wanted to do, like okay, like shoot like people making love in top of on top of a crypt that shoot like this, which means genius, like the small uh shell-sized kind of like uh coffins, and then like the small skeletons, and those kind of like things are just like his like fascination with like the gothicness around it, is and like like the characters themselves are just like having this almost like haunted house kind of adventure.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_06: And like to me, that film has always felt like as a more like uh free-flowing experience.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_06: Like it's more like you enter and go out of this like kind of rite and feels like no dead space, you know, in a way that his other films have.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_06: He has that hooked, but then it's kind of almost again, once again, just an excuse to get to what he really uh cares about, which are about like these like clowns in a cemetery and these like old figures of like roasters around, and like the gothic crypts, and like to me, that that's like just like him going to do what he really cares about.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_05: Again, it's just another instance of yeah, he's he's kind of interested in that, but really I think he's just more interested in the sensations.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_05: You know, he's interested in her seeming Really mad and crazy and having these hallucinations.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_05: You know, yeah, there's kind of a a plot element to it, but it's not really a character, you know, it's like he just wants to see this woman going crazy in a graveyard, you know, and actually that graveyard itself is almost like a good metaphor for Roland's filmography, in a way, you know.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_05: You step inside it, you'll get stuck there overnight, it'll be dark, sometimes it's boring, sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's exciting, and you'll see lots of creepy stuff, and eventually you'll get out, you know, and that's that's the kind of Roland universe.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Even in the I think it's a mar marriage ceremony they attend, like it's it feels so stuffy and uh depressing and uh like pessimistic in the in those moments that that it already uh prefigures what's going to unfold.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I still feel like compared to films where he tries to build a lore, even quite uh let's say clumsily in a clumsy way, I think I like the self-con like the contained uh environment here, because there are obviously in like infinite possibilities, but it's still in a more coherent, subdued, minimal setting that uh I think increases the atmospheric quality because you you you are immersed in that environment and there's not many distracting elements as in his other films that like some some sometimes like he would just like come up with ideas of costumes of figures that feels a bit too much.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_05: You know what I will also say is that yes, like he doesn't necessarily have interest in metaphors for the reasons that other filmmakers might, but he does know how to uh land a plot point when he when he wants to.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_05: Like I I was really impressed by the basic opening premise of uh lips of blood, which is basically that this man goes to this cast that goes to this um dinner party or something, and he sees on the mirror a picture of a castle, and the picture of the castle reminds him of this it brings out this memory in him, and that's what starts this whole vampire journey.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: La rose de cristal and concurap.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: Alors que nous sommes merveilleux jardin sculpture de pierre jardin.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, I would like to take issue with both of you because after Gerard Demiano I said no more pornography for a while.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_05: And Oiku said, What about Jean Roland?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I said, sure, Jean Roland, vampires, a little bit of nudity, but it's it it's thankful there's no pornography there.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_05: And then what do I do when we start this journey?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I open his letterbox uh page and I see Vibra Vibracio Penetration Yeah triple penetration, I don't know.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_05: Sweet sweet penetrations.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_05: Our ambassador Alonso went went deep.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_05: Rolling in the deep penetrated the hardcore.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_06: So someone had to like the dirty word here, like that's why people listen, right?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_05: So reports from the dark side, what did you find there?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's interesting because like after um Garen Rose, he did like um some sex plotation films.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_06: Uh well the the actual first porn film he did, uh the selection of Amy in English or uh Phantasm in French is kind of almost like uh this guy's vampire film.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know how he found this castle, but again, it's kind of like okay, there's this castle we need to shoot in and just like find every single instance we can to like make the sex scenes like use the castle in some interesting way.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_06: So the castle becomes kind of like a protagonist of the film.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_06: It feels to me like very uh Roland at the end of the day.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_06: Like uh you see, despite being like a porn film, it's still like 88 minutes long, and it has like a lot of like people, like naked people wandering around, which is like that also happens in non-pornographic films.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um so I guess again, it has also like that impulse I was describing in the Iron Rose, and I can we could also all coincide it in all his films.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_06: It's kind of like, okay, so it's this like I found this dungeon in this uh castle, and this dungeon has a crypt, so naturally, uh oh, what we want?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh cowgirl scene in that crypt.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_06: That's what we need.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_06: Then there has like a naked woman like being tied together because there's some sort of plot about like an evil oligarchs are always countless evil figures in his films, so this one also coincides in that sense, and he's kind of like having this like torture chamber for like some sort of woman, he imprisons them then.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and there's this other woman that arrives there and kind of like tries to save them, uh which leads to a lot of sex with random people.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_06: In a way, he was always doing kind of like a pornographic logic to his films that only clicked when I saw this film, which is kind of like uh very like in impulsive, kind of very like to the point.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_06: Like, I want the image, I want the image quick, I want the image like Sapellin, and once I get that, then I'm switched to the other thing.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_06: So it kind of feels very dreamy and hazy in that sense.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_06: And I know his pornographic career then perhaps went to other places, but like at least uh Phantasm, I will say, like, yeah, uh totally in line with the the wider like outworld uh project.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: In the documentary I watched, I think there was a mention like the the because there's the the mention of the pornographic period, and he refers to the uh phantasm as this thing that he tried to like combine, merge these two universes, and I think that attempt like wasn't really successful.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_06: You can really tell that something changed because uh from one porno film to the next one, the first one is sounded the selection of aiming in English, who said, Okay, there's some selection in there in the next one, heart penetration, like no nonsense.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_06: Now it's now it's straight to a point.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So my point is in the film they say Roland didn't like like filming hardcore scenes, so he would just like leave the room and like uh leave the cameraman to like direct them.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this I think he's either a journalist or like a close friend of Roland who says uh if you watch uh Roland's like his porn films, he you would just like you would find these scenes in any French pornography film from that time.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_06: After Phantasm he starts using the the Selzonism uh Michel Gentil, I think.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I'll I would argue like Phantasm is kind of like this like attempt, like kind of like a possible career that never happened of this like huge Yeah, it's like a it's an attempt to reconcile those two realms, and it does didn't make maybe work for him.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry Chris.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_05: No, I I think it's interesting also that he's working in France, which is kind of the the one country that was really um capable of a sort of tolerance of its hardcore industry within a little bit more of a sort of I don't want to say mainstream, but kind of generally accepted cinema alongside it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_05: Because uh Roland, you know, he went into pornography after you know making quite a few of the films that people really associate with him.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_05: And while making pornography, he made The Grapes of Death, Fascination, Knight of the Hunted.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_05: You know, he was still making hardcore films at that time, and then he came out of it and he still, again, made a lot more films.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_05: It was it there wasn't this, you know, hardcore prison trap, you know, where you you step in and you never leave.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_05: He was kind of moving between the two worlds, and I think that's a kind of testament to French culture's relative tolerance of these things.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_05: But also for him, you know, I don't think he ever really made a film with a big budget, so he was always kind of you know working in this quasi-born logic in a way, you know, just throwing things together, making things quickly, um, and so on.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_05: And and I think, you know, not having seen these films, I think the most obviously interesting kind of um biographical, historical element is that he while making uh the film Vibration Sexuelle uh 1977, he he met uh Brigitte Leye, who while he was watching her have sex on camera, he kind of realized that she has a strange charisma, and so he brought her into uh the grapes of death, which is their their first collaboration, in a quasi-exploitative way as Oko suggested, but also in a way that really gives her this kind of amazing, you know, she's a fairly minor role, but she's she plays essentially this kind of in a way, kind of evil spirit haunting this village that's going to hell.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so she so she has a very substantial part, and she really I mean, she really makes a huge impression.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_05: So I also felt a great deal of tenderness for Mr.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_05: Jean Roland in that moment because it's like you know, people don't treat pornographic actresses well, and this is the one example where they someone really brought them to make you know non-pornographic films, uh, and it turns out that she's like one of the best screen presences ever.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in Great Soft Death, she's more f she exists more as a physical presence, but in Knight of the Hunted, she becomes a very tragic figure, and like that's that's a real level up, I think.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know how they manage it, but she become she she becomes an embodied figure.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: She she she's breathtaking.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we can talk a bit about zombies.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're not like even zombies, like living dead.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_06: As with the vampires, kind of very elusively just on dead films, like he once again doesn't really care about the zombies anymore in the sense that they kind of bring decay and kind of do that crazies in the Romero way as well, of like hey, people are just like kind of murderers like uh and like lunatics are just like run uh running around.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_06: I think it's in grips of that it's more like a visceral element, or like which is again like shouldn't be overstated, uh like a very like violent film for for the time.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_06: I think sometimes this uh described as like a like proto-gore film, uh, which I can I can see in a way.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_06: Uh it's also like before like the rise of Fulci, so there's like uh working in the same like moment in time.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_06: Whole like vibe of the film is like very uh negative from the get-go, and in that sense, uh he's kind of like applying this atmospheric keys to other films that would now repurpose to uh a level of like abrasiveness that I think is like very refreshing at this point in his career.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_05: The theme of the movie is decay itself.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_05: I think this is is also one of my favorites, and it's also as close to a kind of coherent normal movie as Jean Roland ever made.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um, because it has like themes and ideas and consistency throughout, relatively speaking.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um But this I I mean the central idea of like these grapes that are essentially poisoned and like the decay and the rot and and so on so on, is it's a it's a very, very strong idea in this film.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: Like this this film's combination of that on one hand, this like wetness and rot, and on the other hand, this kind of gore and you know collective madness of a village is very, very, very strong.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_05: And and it kind of you know, I I mean I love that film and and I I love its diffuseness, but you know, after the opening part you've start to feel that Jean Roland might be a bit better behaved as a narrative stylist, and then it's like, oh no, he's not.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_05: But somehow like those elements sustain that film in a way that's I don't know very special to me.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_05: Like it feels very much of a piece, even when it's kind of going off in all different kinds of directions.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember this very specific scene in the opening uh part when they're still on the train, and we have this traveling tracking shot of different compartments in the train, and we don't see like what's hidden inside, but just like this tracking shot.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think he does a similar thing in the nude vampire when they're in this hospital, we see like in office uh spaces like people working in this like a shady hospital.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know exactly what this space is, but just like this research center place where they like people are researching about these mutants, it's just like a tracking shot of what's going on.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the because the time stretches on and on, and we don't know what's going on, why we are seeing this tracking shot, it like increases the uncanny feeling.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's my favorite Roland moment.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like the when the time stretches and we see something longer than we are supposed to be seeing it, that's the Roland at its best.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: What I don't like, I I I don't want to say I don't like, but what I think doesn't really work is the gore climactic moments.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they they are the best uh parts in grapes of death, like when she has to kill uh village like a villagers, or like you know, when when like Living Dead approaches and there's always this climactic moment of death of gore, like explosion or like a blood bursting.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: That I feel like he's he tries them, but he's not as good as other zombie or gore filmmakers.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're very proto-gore.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think Alonso, you said it.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's just he he go tries to go into that direction, but I don't think that we really we really achieve that climactic sense that we would have, for example, with Fulci.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's the dread of that climactic moment when she when Fulci like bursts someone's eye.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have that in Roland.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_06: No, I get what you're saying.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_06: I think it kind of clearly shows like uh it's not where his heart is in a way, like it's not like this uh say this does Fulci is in a little bit in that sense.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_06: Which I but uh to me it's also interesting because like uh the grapes of that, and also I kind of associate this with the Iron Rose, like they kind of feel like the most like constrained and like genre films that kind of exist beyond his filmography.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_06: And it's interesting because also this seems to be like some of the ones we like the most, kind of like his uh like film like mannerisms and his ways of approaching textures when they're in service of like a more like perhaps late, like like specific and like to the point premise.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_06: We kind of find like to me, there's like a little bit of like tension of like him having to like reframe this tension, then becomes like him having to find imaginative ways to deal with like a material that could be with in the hands of like a lesser filmmaker, could be just like a like run-of-the-mill, like like zombie film.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_06: But here, as you were saying, like that there's the atmospheric element, there's like the specificity of like the uh his relations to like the like French like uh like environment, and then like these uh elements that keep like recurring around like how he like frames bodies, how he always has this um sense of letting things linger.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe we can just quickly talk about this this kind of classic trio.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's kind of approaching where we're at, I would say, which is probably Fascination, Night of the Hunted, and The Living Dead Girl, which I kind of I think considered his last kind of great gasp in terms of the classical era of Jean Roland.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_05: Now that I'm talking to you, I almost feel like which movie I liked always almost random, you know, because I don't I can't always remember my reasoning for it because I think it's almost like it's based on mood, it's based for tolerance of kind of extreme eccentricity.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, there's also just things in these movies that kind of somehow strike you on a personal level or don't strike you.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_05: You know, for example, for me, um La Morte Vivante, uh Living Dead Girl is not a film that particularly moved me.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_05: The kind of melancholy of this central living dead girl in English, clumsy way of saying it, it it it didn't strike me.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas the the same melancholy in both Fascination and Knight of the Hunted really get under my skin somehow and they become films that I can't stop thinking about.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_05: And if you know, in in the case of um Knight of the Hunted, it's also quite again, always these contradictions.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's like both a very coherent film and also makes no sense.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's a film that I think Roland fans are a bit mixed on overall, I would say.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_05: It is almost conceptual in some way.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_05: I mean it's set inside uh a skyscraper and there's a bunch of amnesiacs trapped in a skyscraper.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's a very kind of Cronenberg premise, but unlike Cronenberg, he never really goes anywhere with it.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_05: It's just kind of mood and atmospherics.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_05: But for me, somehow in that film, that same melancholy that I mentioned somehow just becomes overwhelming to me.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_05: And it becomes almost this perfect setting for a for a Roland film, you know, like these people just trapped in a single space, not really knowing who they are, not really knowing what just happened, and just sort of, I don't know, vibing or something something, I guess.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think the existential dread is so powerful in that film.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know why it it's it's also very the the the atmosphere, the way the the whole interior spaces are built are very there's nothing in there.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that also adds up to the the nothingness of the characters' into interior interiority.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you just like feel completely overwhelmed by their anxiety and their dread because there's nothing to hold on to.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you take a step back and think about that in a more like serious way, it just feels so over overwhelming, and you just like you feel sad for these people.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I I mean the same thing happens in Graves of Death.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's this social political subtext creates an another oppressive layer.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's a clear Holocaust imagery attached to the last act of that film.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: That there are trains, there is people getting shot and systematically killed, and they're being burned.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Graves of death.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a discussion between these two characters when they talk, when they suddenly start to talk about fascism, and he says, like, we defended our country against like German fascists, and he's like, No, not only German fascists, French and Ger German fascists, older fascists, and people are still fighting it.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it just happened so unexpectedly, and suddenly you find yourself confronted with the the real in a more historical sense.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I found that wow, how did you do this?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's weird to be reminded that these films in a way exist in the real world.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_06: Those moments perhaps not don't really work that much with me uh in older like uh Reland films, like uh Leaps of Blood, but the element that it's kind of like creating character psychology and like trauma around like vampires.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_06: This like uh character quests relating his story with vampires to me was kind of like there's like too much like uh an attempt to like uh gravitas here for me.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_06: Because I guess like to me, he's more like uh the way he goes like for images to me is like transcends than any like traditional points.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_06: In fascination, also there's that element of the power dynamics that I guess kind of like in a way grounds it in the real world.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_06: But I guess in that film to me works because it kind of goes back to being more about like the atmosphere around that doom later and very like gloomy in how it's kind of like hallucination exists, which to me also always gives to me more credit towards relying as a filmmaker than perhaps just the assumption of going by the posters or going by how these films are like described sometimes.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_06: It doesn't feel like psychotronic in like a B-movie exploitation sense, genuine melancholic sense to those films that to me kind of make them feel like distant or like their own thing, which is clearly more like uh in tune with some like arthouse elements, or perhaps like half a more like artful in a non-derogatory sense.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_06: I guess like fascination in a way to me is kind of like quintessential example of that.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_05: From what I've seen, Lost in New York is kind of the bridge that goes into that nether world of the digital digital Roland.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_05: Because I mean, you know, shooting on 16mm, 35mm in these earlier films is I mean, super important because the colours, the texture of the images, I mean is extremely distinctive.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_05: So to see him gradually transition to this flat digital video is both a little bit sad, but also kind of inspiring that like really nothing stopped him.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_06: You can see in his filmography, which appeared which I am very sad I couldn't explore, which is like from 84 to 88, which is exactly between The Living Dead Girl, which uh Scritch was saying is his last kind of a classically acclaimed film and uh Lost in New York, which is kind of I as I see like the last like Roland film or like the late Roland film that people seem to love.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_06: He did Sidewalks of Bangkok, which is kind of like a globe-throwing pulp film.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_06: Then he did like a slapstick comedy, then he did, which is uh my personal failing in this podcast, he did Emanuel Six with Bruno Sinconi.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_05: Sequel to Emanuel 5, Ora Chiefs Masterpiece.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_06: And also like one of the Elskir Filmbox podcasts, quintessential canonical films, I would say.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_05: One of the low points of this podcast.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_05: Well high points, sorry.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_06: He this like three film stretch, I think, trigger something within him through like this melancholic period that we're not speaking about about again in a few sequel episode we'll have to dig into because we we we didn't uh do our homework there.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_05: Once he moved to digital, he was kind of able to do what he wanted, but a little bit without the pizzazz, at least like the four like the visual richness, because he had lost this this key tool.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_05: Lost in New York, I mean it's it is an anomaly because it was a film that John Roland basically scammed out of a separate opportunity that he had, which was that uh he was down on his luck and he had a producer friend who told him, Okay, I need some b-roll of New York City uh for this TV series I'm working on.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_05: He has a bunch of money, go to New York and get me shots of the city.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_05: So while he was doing that, he used extra film to make this uh 54 minute um I mean to call it a narrative film is a stretch because I think it's really like it's like the authorist ghost exercised in a way because it has literally no, I mean, no through line really.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_05: It's just kind of like two women sort of, you think maybe, and they're wearing masks and they're going around New York City.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_05: And there's some amazing shots of the city.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's like 80s, late 80s New York.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and it's and of course, where did they get teleported to?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_05: The beach in northern France.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_05: It's like it's it's for Roland fans, it's one of those like DiCaprio pointing at the screen, like erotic strip teasers which are somehow like mystical.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it's it it's it's all there, so it's this kind of like last um transmission from the planet Roland.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_05: But there is this late period which I started to watch um The Mask of Medusa, which is this last film from 2009.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_05: And I mean it's really weird to see to see him in that form, you know, because the film is the same.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's exactly the same vibe, you know, the way he shoots the characters.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_05: There's also women stripping off and rubbing themselves and rolling around on the floor, there's blood, there's gruesome deaths that are very unconvincing and long, interminable scenes going nowhere.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_05: But it's shot in very cheap, flat digital, so it's quite shocking.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_05: I just wanted to say that those films are quite well loved, surprisingly.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_05: You know, they're not like the late films of a lot of directors that we've talked about.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_05: I think The Knight of the Clocks has quite a lot of haters, but the other three films, um Two Orphan Vampires uh from 1997, Dracula's Fiance from 2002, and The Mask of Medusa are pretty, you know, among the the initiated pretty highly um loved films, so we have to come back to them one day and and pay our penance.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: What have you guys been watching lately?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_06: So while I was uh watching the beautiful Euro Trash of uh Roland, I was confronted with like a different strand of so-called Euro Trash.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_06: I guess they kind of like framed in as like the crime films of like uh Claude Chavrol, a filmmaker who I haven't had the greatest experience with in the past.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_06: That's why I continue to not have the greatest uh relationship with.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_06: Watch La Femme Amphidel and Le Vich.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_06: La Femme Am Fidel really didn't work for me.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_06: Despite dealing with very like pulpy material in a sense, and he's cooking like psychosexual elements, his stylishness and his like ornateness to me is like very rigid in a sense.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_06: There's like a distancing element there that kind of makes beautiful images, but to me, dialogue a little bit like rawness of the material.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_06: In Lesbich, he kind of introduces these kind of like slapstick characters, like I kind of like almost commenting on the plot of his story that kind of like save it a little bit for me.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_06: And that film is also like a little more playful, I would say.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_06: The film feels like there's more like lightness towards it, particularly towards like the first two-thirds of the film.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_06: Towards the end, it goes more into like the pure like Chavrol psychosexual game of mirrors and like the spaces, which I understand why it's like people love it.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_06: Just like it doesn't work for with me with the kind of material he's working with.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_06: So there's hope still, but like I guess my heretical take is like I still haven't found the Shavrol film that works for me.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_05: It's a pity because he's long been a kind of subject of interest of mine, also potentially for this podcast, because he's a filmmaker who who made a lot of middle brow films that look quite unappetizing.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_05: But he also made you know 65 feature films, which is unusual, you know, especially for those guys.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_05: I mean he was the one who really became a kind of jobbing director.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_05: So I I've always been interested to dig into those.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um but it's been it's been years since I've seen those those kind of sixties, seventies films.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_05: I remember really loving uh Le Boucher.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_05: What have you been watching, Arco?
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not much, a lot of work these days, so I've only got to watch uh Correa's last film, Look Back, which was an adaptation of an anime I haven't seen, um, of two uh manga enthusiasts that who met when they're in middle school.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is a like a shut-in girl, that's they how they refer to her because she doesn't go outside and she doesn't attend school, but uh she sends her comic strips to the school newspaper, and there's another girl who's also very interested in drawing and manga, and she gets j jealous of her drawings because she's better in detail and more uh academic, let's say, and they end up meeting each other and they like go on this adventure of like passionate adventure of like becoming manga artists together, but something happens, and I was like, This is this is not my cup of tea, and it's I think there will be a lot of people who would find this film very emotionally uh relevant and touching, but I feel like I'm past my Corrietta fascination or interest.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, okay, whatever.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so there's no lesbian vampires then.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: But like, I mean, I recommended this to my dad, for example, because he's a he's a he's a he he my mom and dad loves Corriera.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's like they he's a he's become this tip stereotypical family filmmaker.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's what Corrietta's for at this point, no.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_06: At this point, he's kind of like a glorified Hallmark filmmaker.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_05: How about you, Chris?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I haven't been watching much, but uh I saw this uh Robert Aldrich film that I really liked.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um may resurface in a future episode, who knows?
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_05: But I can talk a little bit about it.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_05: It's called Autumn Leaves.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's um a kind of noir-ish melodrama starring John Crawford.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_05: And as I'm preparing for the Viennales retrospective of Robert Aldrich, I'm I'm watching the films that I haven't seen before, uh, in preparation for text.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I so far the two that I've watched in this new cycle really kind of blew me away because they they are films that they hit a lot of the points that I usually don't like in these kinds of 50s films, which is they're definitely relatives of Elia Kazan for sure.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_05: There's a danger always in Aldrich in this period of of touching on those same nerves, you know, like very over-the-top performances, very much connected to a certain kind of psychological idea that was very in vogue in the 50s.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_05: But uh Aldric is just a better filmmaker and he gives you so many more um kind of pulpy pleasures along the way.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_05: This film it does touch on those same things.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_05: There are these very kind of drafty, loud, actorly performances, but Aldrich somehow takes you beyond that.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's a it's a about this uh older woman who's marries a mentally unstable uh former soldier and basically just becomes this kind of screaming match, like domestic screaming match.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_05: But it's so beautiful, and it's like this you know, he's always looking for images, he's always looking for ways to free up this uh kind of histrionyx that he's creating in front of you.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_05: And just the last point is that it turns out really that you know with John and Guitar, I think if you just like shoot images of John Crawford in a certain kind of lighting, looking at someone else, like you're making cinema.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you don't you don't need much more than that.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_05: You know, there's just scenes where she's looking, it's like an over-the-shoulder shot, and she's looking at the guy, and it's just like this is this is what it's about.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so that was John Roland episode, guys.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to us.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget to subscribe, like our episodes on the platforms that you listen to or podcasts, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have any comments, complaints, regrets, and propositions for episode, uh, don't hesitate to reach out to us on outskirtsfilm magazine at gmail.com and see you in two weeks in a different country, in a whole different setting of Shoctober.