François de Roubaix - Daughters Of Darkness (Les lèvres rouges)

Описание: In the summer of 1971, Belgian director Harry Kümel shot DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (Les Lèvres Rouges) in Ostend, Belgium, over a period of just a few weeks. He got the idea for the subject on his way out of the office of the producers, who had asked him for a commercial story involving sex and blood. He stopped at a newsagent's and bought a magazine, part of which was about Elizabeth Bathory, a countess who lived in 16th-century Transylvania and had young virgins slit their throats to bathe in their blood, thus keeping her skin young.

Co-produced by several countries, each of which sent an actor, it was Henry Lange, one of the producers, who thought that François de Roubaix could compose the music. With the support of a Romanian musician, he suggested introducing a Hungarian inspiration using the cymbalum. While Kümel had in mind grandiloquent symphonic music, François opted for something more stripped down, lyrical, with straight, untempered voices obeying the few cymbalum notes. Once again, he used members of the Swingle Singers, with a few skidding strings, a rotating harp motif and a timpani. The resulting atmosphere conveys the bareness of landscapes and bodies, as well as the coldness of winter. A saturated guitar opens and closes the film and really gives you the chills, like the passage of a razor blade over the skin. In the end, even if Kümel wanted a different musical approach, he was impressed by François' work, who worked on an LP, but had to make do with a 45rpm release.