The iron rose
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The iron rose |
| Original title | La rose de fer |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1973 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean Rollin |
| script | Jean Rollin (scenario), Tristan Corbière (poem), Maurice Lemaître (dialogues) |
| production | Sam Selsky |
| music | Pierre Raph |
| camera | Jean-Jacques Renon |
| cut | Michael patient |
| occupation | |
The iron rose (original title: La rose de fer ) is a French feature film by Jean Rollin from 1973. It is also known under the alternative German title Friedhof der toten Seelen .
action
The film begins with a view of a stony beach on a cloudy day. A young woman in a brightly colored skirt is standing between rotting wooden stakes. When a black, iron rose washes up on the beach, she takes the woman in her hand with obvious fascination. She caresses the rose for a while, then throws it back into the sea with a flourish and leaves the scene smiling. The opening credits follow . While these are faded in, the opening credits partly already refer to later scenes in the film, for example at a point that shows the young woman standing in front of a parked steam locomotive and hugging a young man. After pictures of a run-down provincial town with crumbling houses, the scene abruptly changes to a wedding banquet. The girl who was seen on the beach and in the opening credits sits at the table, where she seems more isolated from the rest of the company. The young man is sitting at the next table and is talking to other female guests, but gives her looks. Suddenly he gets up and announces that he wants to recite a poem. The enigmatic poem closes with an “Adieu to life”, which is addressed to “you who will weep for me until I feel the desire to weep myself”. As he recites it, he looks conspicuously in the direction of the girl. He ends with a laugh to the applause of the wedding party.
The young woman and man, whose names are never mentioned, then meet at the edge of the forest and arrange to go on a bike ride there on Sunday. They want to meet at the "old train station". This is where French “Mikado” steam locomotives are parked. The two play catch between the locomotives before setting off on their bicycles. They come to a cemetery and go inside at the man's insistence. In a shot that lasts a few seconds, a man in clichéd “ vampire clothing ” closes a gate behind him and disappears into a tomb . While they are picnicking on a grave, an old woman spreads flowers on the tombs. After walking between the graves, the couple come to a tomb . The man opens it and asks the young woman to climb inside with him. At first she refuses, but then follows him after being frightened by a man in fur clothing who is walking by in silence. While the couple is making love naked in the fairly clean, stone-lined crypt (the man lights a found candle), a clown slowly walks through the cemetery and lays flowers at a grave. The old woman can also be seen again; she leaves the cemetery and closes the gate behind her.
When the couple, dressed again, leave the crypt, they find that night has fallen. You can no longer find the way to the exit. In search of the exit, they become increasingly restless. They come to what they believe to be the administration building and hope to find someone inside to let them out. However, only children's coffins are piled up in the building. In the light of a match the man opens a coffin lid. The horrified woman tells him to take her away from this place. He lovingly carries her a little on his arm. To reassure her, he tells her to close her eyes, he'll lead her to the exit like this. When they pass a metal grille, he claims it is the grille on the edge of the cemetery. The woman opens her eyes and realizes that she was lied to. They get into an argument and fight, the woman hits the man with a wooden cross. After they continued to wrestle with each other, the man hit the woman several times and knocked over a tomb, they calm down again and decide to move on to at least warm up a little. Their behavior becomes increasingly irrational. While the man curses across the “damned cemetery” and kicks the cross, the woman suddenly seems to make friends with the environment. Lying on a tombstone, she declares that she feels good and that she doesn't want to go any further. She addresses the dead as her “friends” who have been locked up “with the bars and crosses”. The man, who ran away in horror after a bloodcurdling scream the woman gave when he tried to persuade her to move on, falls into an open grave, lies there between skeletons and does not seem to be able to get up. When the woman comes to this grave, she seems to want to pull it out first, but then climbs in to it. They love each other in the midst of the skeleton. Then they climb out of the grave and wander on through the cemetery.
When the woman holds a skull like a mask in front of her face, the man knocks it out of her hand. They come to what the man takes to be the cemetery wall. He wants to climb over them, but the woman refuses: “Why do you want to return to them? You don't know the true way. ”Furious, he climbs over the wall without her. On the other side, he has to find out that he is still in the cemetery and nothing but rows of graves can be seen in front of him. After a fit of anger, he returns to the woman. The chiming of the hour tells them that it is midnight - the man had forgotten his watch in the crypt earlier that evening. In the outstretched hand of a stone angel the woman finds the iron rose. She takes this, caresses it with a smile and explains that it is the "crystal rose" that she will lead. With a funeral wreath around her neck, she plays hide-and-seek with the man. You get back to the crypt in which you had enjoyed yourself at the beginning. The man explains with relief that he will get his watch and that they will be saved. After he has stepped inside, the woman approaches, closes and locks the tomb. In vain the man begs her screaming to open the door and let him out. The scene changes to the beach, where the woman, naked and with the iron rose in her hand, knocks over iron crosses. She recites poetic lines such as "You will not touch me anymore, evil is leaving". Towards the end of her recitation, she is back in the cemetery. The man in the crypt continues to yell for release, but finally suffocates. The woman begins a happy dance across the cemetery, between the crosses and tombs. When morning comes, she opens the crypt, also climbs down and lets the lid fall over her. Her last words are: "You are all dead. We are alive." In the meantime the cemetery gate has been opened and the old woman is walking through the cemetery with a flower pot in her arms. She puts it on the lid of the crypt.
Publications
The film premiered in France on April 12, 1973. He also appeared under the alternative French title La nuit du cimetière. It was not a commercial success.
From 2005 the film was released on DVD-Video in several countries . The French Region 2 DVD has a playing time of 80 minutes, while the German releases are all 77 minutes long and have no credits . The DVD, which was released on January 31, 2005 under the title Friedhof der toten Seelen, was first released in Germany and was distributed without an FSK examination. In the same year, however, another German DVD with the same playing time was released, now with a release from the age of 16 and under the title Die eiserne Rose . In November 2005 the film was approved by the FSK for ages 12 and up.
background
In an interview with director Jean Rollin, which is included in a German DVD version of the film, he says that the idea for the film arose when he was out with René Couvert and the cameraman looking for a location for a " Film with a special tragedy ”. They would have found this location near a motorway exit behind a long wall.
The iron rose presumably takes place on All Saints' Day , as a statement by the young woman shows in the middle of the film ("November 1st. The world of the dead mixes with the world of the living.") The lines of poetry are different poems from the volume Les amours jaunes by Taken from Tristan Corbière . The film is dedicated to the French actor René-Jean Chauffard, who died in 1972 .
Reviews
On Rotten Tomatoes five English-language reviews were considered, all were positive.
In a very positive review on filmtipps.at, Christian Ade describes the film as “Rollins' zenith and the quintessence of his work.” Julian von Heyl's criticism on echolog.de is also positive, although less enthusiastic . After the reviewer noted that the film “divides Jean Rollin's fan base”, he discusses it in friendly terms and finally calls it an “extravagant finger exercise that is deliberately excluded from the rules of the current narrative style”.
Web links
- The Iron Rose in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Cemetery of Dead Souls in the online movie database
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b The Iron Rose at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- ↑ Version view: Cemetery of Dead Souls (X-NK) . Retrieved March 13, 2013.
- ↑ Version view: Cemetery of Dead Souls / The Iron Rose (Cult Cinema International) . Retrieved March 13, 2013.
- ↑ Release certificate for The Iron Rose . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2005 (PDF; test number: 104 323 DVD).
- ↑ Interview with Jean Rollin. In: The iron rose . Cult Cinema International DVD 80509, 2005.
- ↑ Christian Ade: The iron rose . In: filmtipps.at . 2011. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
- ↑ Julian von Heyl: The iron rose (La rose de fer) . In: Echolog . January 15, 2008. Retrieved March 13, 2013.