Jean Michel Rollin Roth Le Gentil 3 November β 15 December was a French film director, actor, and novelist best known for his work in the fantastique genre. Rollin's career, spanning over fifty years, featured early short films and his achievements with his first four vampire classics Le viol du vampire , La vampire nue , Le frisson des vampires , and Requiem pour un vampire His films are noted for their exquisite, if mostly static, cinematography, off-kilter plot progression, poetic dialogue, playful surrealism and recurrent use of well-constructed female lead characters.
Belied by high production values and precise craftsmanship, his films were made with little money, often against deadlines. In the mids, lack of regular work led the director to direct mostly pornographic films under various pseudonyms, an activity he continued until the early s.
Rollin had a passion for cinema from an early age. He saw his first film during the second World War. It was Capitaine Fracasse , a film directed by Abel Gance. Rollin decided he wanted to make films when he grew up; his father, a theatre actor, was a heavy influence on him. During his teens, he developed an obsession for American serials and read comic books.
When he was 16, he found a job at Les Films de Saturne , helping write invoices while earning some money though he wanted to be involved in cinema. They specialized in creating opening and closing credits and short cartoons, but real films were also shot such as industrial shorts and documentaries. Rollin was part of the crew in a short documentary about Snecma , a big factory in France which built motors and planes.
He arranged the tracking shots, laid the tracks, checked the electricity, and helped the cameraman. When Rollin did his military service for the French army , he worked as an editor in the cinema department alongside Claude Lelouch.
