R.I.P. Legends Lost but Remembered

The Saloon
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R.I.P. Blake Edwards

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R.I.P.Jean Rollin

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Very sad news. R.I.P.

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Jean Rollin also

What a day

RIP

Cest la mort Vivant, ou Cest la vie

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Most websites have been really respectful and loving with their articles about Jean Rollin’s death (even those were it kind of shows that they don’t think much of his films), but there is one that kind of bothered me. The French site Écrans (LibĂ©ration.fr) acts like Le lac des morts vivants was his most important contribution to cinema for being an unmissable so-bad-it’s-good movie. The writer even says that foreigners probably like his films more than the French partially because they don’t understand the language (and so they don’t know how bad the actors are). Really?

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I always loved his Pink Panther movies of course but another favourite is Days of Wine and Roses. A beautifully made drama which shows that Edwards was not just a one trick pony.

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The acting in Rollin’s films is in parts amateurish in other parts in the same film very intense. Same goes for his directing, but he created very original and highly atmospheric scenes. Not to mention his talent for erotic mood.

I think he was his own genre, and he had deserved a wider acknowledgement.

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Wow - that is sad. R.I.P. indeed. :frowning: :cry:

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[quote=“Stanton, post:307, topic:1512”]The acting in Rollin’s films is in parts amateurish in other parts in the same film very intense. Same goes for his directing, but he created very original and highly atmospheric scenes. Not to mention his talent for erotic mood.

I think he was his own genre, and he had deserved a wider acknowledgement.[/quote]

I agree. I’m not even the biggest Rollin fan around, but that particular “eulogy” seemed to me like it was diminishing his role to a simple “z-movie” (the site’s words, not mine) director and even though the site wasn’t mean about it, it’s sure ain’t fair, especially right now.

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If you also to take in account that contrary to Italy for instance, French underground directors like Rollin weren’t the backbone of the cinema industry, while directors like Fulci, Lenzi, Bava even D’Amato were respected by the mainstream and in some occasions were themselves the mainstream, permitting with the success of their films for the Fellini’s Visconti’s etc to exist, in France that didn’t happened that way, directors like Rollin, Lemoine, Pecas, and others had to do porn or soft porn flicks (very profitable industry in the 70’s and 80’s) mostly to finance their other projects: The first Rollin films are very simple in production terms but you can see that there’s a good direction there, this fact also give the French porn flicks of the 70’s some artistic credibility, that they didn’t really have, a porn flick it’s a porn flick nothing more, like Rollin himself said. So in the end these directors were never taking in consideration by the elitists and normally with feeling of artistic superiority French critics and industry in general. That’s why you have so many French porn productions in the 70’s, while the Italians where doing mostly more soft sex comedies (the censure was also stronger in Italy during that period of time).
Of course you can say that in the end The French were right, as the Italian cinema industry collapsed in the 90’s and the French one survived and became even stronger, there’s a reason for that its called tax payers money, in France movie production got a lot of government subsides and grants, even a film like the 5Th element receive it, the French cultural government bureau is very strong and they bet in the arts as an industry, like any other one, something that didn’t happened in Italy, where all depended on the public success of the films.

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Interesting! I don’t know a lot about the French film industry.

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Captain Beefheart has died. R.I.P. What an awful year.

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I just imagine the big gig somewhere with his mate Zappa

RIP

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[quote=“El Topo, post:313, topic:1512”]I just imagine the big gig somewhere with his mate Zappa

RIP[/quote]

Bongo Fury! :’(

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Was just getting ready to post this
 bummer

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[quote=“El Topo, post:313, topic:1512”]I just imagine the big gig somewhere with his mate Zappa

RIP[/quote]

Hopefully they remember to avoid the yellow snow.

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Peter Yates 1929-2011 Director of Bullitt. Sad news. Now we’ll never know Stanton :wink: His life was certainly not speeded up.

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Isn’t life in the showbiz not always speeded-up?

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That’s a great shame. He made a handful of really worthwhile films. R.I.P. Peter Yates.

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I love Breaking Away & will always have a soft spot in my heart for An Innocent Man with the evil cop guy that looks like Peter Cetera. Not to mention others like Krull, Suspect, The Deep & Guns Of The Navarone