Daughters of Darkness director Harry Kumel

It’s a historical subject about something that happened in Belgium after the Second World War. We almost had a revolution in our country because some parts of the country wanted to keep the king and others didn’t want to keep him. That’s in a nutshell but it’s more complicated than that but that’s the best I can do in this context.

If everything works out as I hope this should be something for March 2008.

No, that’s completely incorrect. I’m quite busy. I haven’t been making features for a long time because I make a lot of commercials, which as you can imagine, make more money than feature films. So that is one of the reasons why I didn’t make more feature films since my last movie. Also because that last movie was not up to the standard I wanted to make it. Not through any fault of mine but I didn’t want to go through that charade again except when I got the freedom to do whatever I want. I do not need to make movies in order to live you see. So I want to make them as I want and not as other people think they should be made.

That is something one cannot disagree with.

Some young people that had made a very successful commercial film asked me to do it. Many films are propped up completely by subsidies which makes for strange movies sometimes. They wanted it to be in the style of my first feature, but commercial. So I looked for a subject and quite by accident I fell upon the story of the Countess Elizabeth Báthory and proposed that to them but they said that it was too expensive to make. Then I came upon the idea, “What if the Countess were still alive and the scheme of staying young forever had succeeded?” That was the point of departure and we wrote the treatment extremely quickly and the production was sold on the strength of the treatment alone because it was a combination of sex and horror, which was quite in vogue. The idea was developed in the autumn and by next summer we were already shooting. For Belgian standards it was extremely quickly.

Well, that was more or less obvious given the subject matter. She was a lady who bathes in the blood of virgins so from there it became that she had a helper and that helper was a lesbian. It wasn’t that exactly but it was more or less a given at that point. I didn’t especially develop that idea but it came about as we went along. Our aim was to make as many sex scenes as possible. That was our purpose. We had to be very commercial so we needed all permutations of sex scenes. That’s often the way films are done and when they come out differently that’s so much the better.

No, never. I cannot draw, absolutely not. But I try to give all my films and even my commercials a special look. That’s what I’m paid for. I am very much influenced by Josef Von Sternberg. He made trashy subjects and elevated them. I use the same approach. That’s the appeal of doing genre movies. You can do a lot cinematographically because people do not expect them to be important. You can avoid being pretentious and produce films that have special meaning.

Oh no. This was such a small production that we shot in five weeks on existing sets. The only thing that was built was something to match the exterior to the interior when you first walk into the hotel. The rest is all there at the location, barely touched.

I’m not aware of that but it was an extraordinary surprise that it was a runaway success, to begin with, in France. It opened in France and then it was a big success in America, all things considered for a European movie.

Well it was released quite normally in the United States. Bill Lustig remembers seeing it at a very seedy place on 42nd Street when it came out. I’m still a bit surprised by the reception it had because I consider it a niche movie.

That’s correct. People with whom I worked later like the great English cameraman, Gerry Fisher, who kept saying, “When I saw that movie I couldn’t make out whether he meant it or not.” I never told him. You have to do these things with a light touch and not try to take yourself too seriously. Now the filmmaking is another thing, that I take very seriously.

[laughs] I would say that in this movie one should not look too much for great psychological explanations. Let’s leave that to the European filmmakers that make these long, boring movies that some film critics in the New York Times would find interesting. The character of Stefan was made up as we went along, but there was one thing we found interesting at a certain point. Jean Ferry whom I worked with on the screenplay was a very famous screenwriter. But at that time he had no interesting work at all because he belonged to the old French school of filmmaking that was before the New Wave. In France, they always make revolutions. It’s like Alice in Wonderland revolutions. They often say “Off with their heads,” and they’d not respect the old filmmakers and screenwriters. Ferry was really talented. He had written over 50 movies. For our movie he had written that this man Stefan had a mother in England and then one day I thought by myself, “Oh my goodness, what if we make this mother a man?” That was just one of these cuckoo ideas that I had to make him more interesting. If you truly need an answer, Stefan is sadistic because he is very angry at the girl that she put him in this quandary of going to see his “mother.”

That I can understand because she is absolutely ravishing. Since it was the production between several countries it was always a surprise whom I would get because all these people were sent by five co-producers or five financiers of the movie. Andrea was the mistress of one of the German distributors at the time. She was warmly recommended to me. They asked me to go and see her in film that was playing at a cinema in Brussels. It was on the verge of pornography but she was so beautiful and so wonderful as an artist. For many of the actors I was told “You take them or you take your leave.” But Andrea was extraordinary and she compliments in a wonderful way, Delphine Seyrig. They made a wonderful couple.

Oh yes, they knew what they were doing. Since it was considered as being extremely daring we decided to not make any bones about it. It was also one of the reasons why it was successful at that time. I said I won’t make the movie if I don’t have Delphine Seyrig. She, at that time, was one of the most intellectual actresses around. She accepted the role because she was a lady who knew a good part when she saw it [laughs].

He was a bastard. Claude Chabrol, a famous French director, had done a movie right before I did [called Ten Days Wonder]. I know Claude very well. I told him, “Oh Claude it was such a nightmare as a director to work with that man.” He said, “Oh, you are complaining, you had him four days, I had him nine weeks. Can you imagine? That was terrible.” Claude, the poor dear, had to work with that man a long period and that was a nightmare for him. Orson Welles was difficult even on the set. In life he was the most exquisite person I have ever known but on set he was not the same person. He was very bitter. Everyone was so excited to meet the maker of Citizen Kane. Well, after one hour they could have killed him. He literally destroyed people’s scenes. That was the bad thing about him. He was so unprofessional. Also he had such old fashioned ideas about cinema and was such a disappointment.

Oh yes. I have an idea for it. Somebody told me, “Wouldn’t you want to make a sequel?” I would love to, but I said “I only want one actress in it.” I would only do this with Nicole Kidman. She’s the only one with whom I would like to do that. She’s the only one capable of carrying this off. But it is a pipe dream as you can imagine. The idea that Nicole Kidman would do it is so far off.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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