He was associated with two approaches to filmmaking: comedies which blended burlesque and melancholic elements, and poetic films based on texts by writers such as the French poet Francis Ponge.
Pollet was born on 20 June 1936 in La Madeleine, Nord, in France.
In the early 1960s, Pollet began exploring another approach to filmmaking with the film Méditerranée, which he made over two years with Volker Schlöndorff.
Pollet tried to create a form of poetic film, using texts and commentaries by writers such as Philippe Sollers, Jean Thibeaudeau, and Francis Ponge.
In the 1990s, he was paralyzed after a train accident, and so he filmed his last movies in the areas around his house in the French town of Cadenet.