It’s the end of November and, as the train moves toward Normandy, it grows cold.

I arrive in Dieppe by 2pm and check into the Hotel du Plage, one of many maritime-themed accommodations sprinkled throughout the small fishing village. Backpack tossed to the bed, I head for the sea.

I’m expecting to find the familiar forlorn rows of stakes, the pocked and chalky cliff-face, the churning pull of the surf I know so well, yet have never seen. After unsteadily making my way down the rocky surface of the beach, close to the water as I can get, I realize that this is all wrong. As far as I can see, in either direction, it’s too populated, too maintained, too valued. Even the fact of the castle overlooking the town, while arresting, is wrong. This isn’t the place.

This is not Jean Rollin’s beach.

I double back to the office of tourism I had passed while looking for my hotel. There, I adopt my usual outsider affect: utterly clueless. It isn’t much of a stretch, and I find it helps with the language divide. Also helps to have plenty of things to point at. Unfortunately, I only have the map of Normandy I’ve just taken off the rack on my way in. “A beach near Dieppe”, Rollin said in “Immoral Tales”. How hard could it be?

The French really don’t know much about this Jean Rollin guy.

The very patient and pretty tourism lady does her best to understand what I’m after, calling superiors to ask if they know what the hell a ‘Rollinade’ is. One vaguely remembers sex-horror films like this, but had no idea any of them had been shot anywhere near here. We narrow it down to a couple of beaches (none of which turn out to be the right one in the end), and I ask for an Internet cafe – I need to re-research this.

There is exactly one place in Dieppe where the beer and bandwidth flows: the Art au Bar Cybercafe. I cold-contact Mark Jason Murray, Webmaster of Virgins & Vampires: The Official Website of Jean Rollin, to plead his assistance, and also print out some screengrabs of Rollin’s beach in hopes that someone will recognize it. The man working the Internet café thinks that it looks like the beach at Quiberville, or perhaps Varengeville …

While waiting for Mark’s reply, I head out to take stock of the town, and to find some dinner. Till now, I’ve stuck to the periphery of Dieppe, bordering the harbor and the oceanside. Now that I descend into the heart of the village, I’m surprised to find a bustling shopping vicinity, which looks just a bit like the back-streets of the Latin Quarter of Paris. There are people everywhere, and though the shops are of little interest to me, they too are plentiful. The young man at the video store (which incidentally, stocks no Rollin) thinks the beach at Pourville is what is pictured in the charcoal-contrasted printouts I show him. No one I ask has heard of Jean Rollin or his films.

I leave the crowds behind and decide to sample one of the scallop-based dishes that are said to be Dieppe’s specialty. There’s certainly no lack of brasseries, so I choose one and set to tucking in.

Upon emerging from the restaurant full and satisfied, I immediately notice the change.

It’s now nearly dark, and the happy throngs of shoppers have vanished. There’s no sign that these shops were even open recently, much less healthily patronized. The only movement on the empty, unlit streets is the slow prowling of a single police cruiser, a searchlight to the side seeking out signs of unwelcome activity. It’s all of 7pm.

I make my way back to the Internet hub, suddenly unconfident that it will be open. The cruiser paces me for a block, and concluding I present no threat, turns down a dim alley and disappears. Now there is nothing moving on the street but me. It’s become quite cold. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see two blonde twins, draped in diaphanous flows of color, appear out of the gloom and drift toward me. Maybe there’s a curfew in place to ward off just such encounters…

I reach the “Art au Bar” regrettably unmolested. It’s surprisingly still open, though empty save for the attendant. I am warned upon entering they are to close at 8. Film Fanaddict Mark has emailed me back with the answer, gleaned from an interview featurette on the recent French DVD of LIPS OF BLOOD: Pourville - an even smaller town further down the coast. A follow-up search reveals that Rollin is neither the first nor the most famous admirer of this stretch of beach. Claude Monet was very fond of the cliffs here and painted them often.


I know what I must do. In the late afternoon, I will be on the beach at Pourville as night falls all around me…

The Transfigured Night

I've often wondered where exactly this fascinating beach was, so often appearing in Rollin's films.
Thanks for the info!!!

And hey - the pictures aren't a bad bonus either! ;)

Thank you for this most detailed and lovely post.

That was a great post, Jeffrey. Very evocative. Well, timed, as I'm just listening to the title track from MARTIN, and it's melancholy tone fits perfectly.

Let us know about your journey.

I am! ;)

Just to eliminate confusion - the fact that this happened in November might be getting lost in the incoming tide of verbiage. Certainly my choice to write in present tense would encourage the perception that I just dashed off this account while on the move.

In reality, I've been back in the US for several months now, and am simply a lazy, lazy man...

There's a few more of these coming (in one form or another). Don't worry, they'll be more show than tell. This was just the establishing, 'my experience in a nutshell', post.

My days of baguettes (and panini, and schnitzel, etc) are behind me, I'm afraid...