The Iron Rose (5 Stars)

I watched this film twice today, so I'm reviewing it twice. That's the rules. I can only remember two other films that I've watched twice on the same day, and both were before I started writing my blog. The first was "Downfall"/"Der Untergang", and the second was "Inland Empire".

I'll stick to a few things that I picked up from the excellent commentary by the film critic Tim Lucas.

The cemetery used in the film is the Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens. It's a small town, but it's famous as the burial place of Jules Verne. There's a special memorial to him, with a sculpture that's well known. Jean Rollin was careful not to show Jules Verne's grave in any scenes, because he wanted the cemetery to remain anonymous.

Most of the scenes were filmed at night. The caretaker was bribed with bottles of wine to allow the film crew to spend all night in the cemetery. I hope he didn't lose his job.

The unnamed man in the film was played by Hugues Quester, a moderately successful French actor. He was arrogant and thought the film was below his standards. He looked down on Jean Rollin and hardly spoke with him. He asked for his name to be kept secret, and many film posters called him Pierre Dupont. Ironically, in retrospect "The Iron Rose" is considered his greatest film.

When Jean Rollin died in 2010 an iron rose was placed on the lid of his coffin.

Tim Lucas also went into some detail about the question I asked about whether Karine died at the end of the film or returned to the beach. He's convinced that she survived, but he added some additional thoughts. He suggests that the old woman in the cemetery might be Karine years later, so the sealing of the crypt could be decades later. He also suggests that the beach scenes are Karine celebrating the man's death. It's possible (in Tim's opinion) that the nude scene never happened, it was just a dream she had when the man was locked in the crypt. I personally doubt this interpretation.

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