“The best actors in the world are those who feel the most and show the least.” That is a statement from actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, who died on Friday at the age of 91 in Uzès in southern France. He had been ill for quite some time.
Jean-Louis Trintignant first attracted attention as the reclusive husband of the sensual Brigitte Bardot in Et Dieu créa la femme (1956). He caused a furore in 1966 alongside Anouk Aimée in love drama Un homme et un femme by Claude Lelouche, became immortal for his role as a shaky hit man in Bertolluci’s Il conformista (1970) and starred in Amour (2012) by Michael Haneke is arguably one of the most important film roles in contemporary film history.
His inscrutability was his trademark and he has given generations of movie viewers a lot of experience about what it means to be introverted. Imploded. About characters who, for many reasons, do not feel (or do not want to) make contact with the world around them. That wasn’t a cool enigma. But something that, despite Trintignant’s apparent charms, felt deeply disturbing.
The son of a wealthy businessman and politician, he first considered a career as a racing driver (a recurring theme in his life and work, his last wife Marianne Hoepfner was also a racing driver), then a law degree, before finally moving to Paris to train as a car driver. stage actor.
He became one of those actors who carefully prepare for each role. Intuition was not there for him: acting is all about professionalism. In that regard, it is significant that in his eighties he came back from his self-imposed retirement when perfectionist and cerebral filmmaker Michael Haneke asked him for Amour† Haneke also never leaves anything to chance, and yet there is a great mystery in the film.
In the Palme d’Or and Oscar winning film, Trintignant plays the elderly George, who has taken on the care of his dying wife. As she slips further and further away, the film revolves around the question of what remains of her in the eyes of the man with whom she shared her life. Love? Memories? Despair? Almost all actors and filmmakers would have let the sentiment seep into the small actions that still connect them to each other and to life. But when reviewing Amour It is again striking how much the film is about George’s inner life, and so much less about the realistic overflow of grief, loss and euthanasia. Every time we see Trintignant lower his eyes, he gives us a chance to look inside him. Right in his soul. There are also emotions that are cloudy.
When Haneke asked him for Amour Trintignant had all but retired from acting. He had fallen into depression after his daughter, actress Marie Trintignant, from his second marriage to filmmaker Nadine Trintignant-Marquand, was murdered in 2003 by her jealous partner. It was not the first time that he drew on the reservoir of his life, without revealing much more about it.
He would later tell that his grief over the death of his mother Claire and baby daughter Pauline had also found a way in the role of the fascist Marcello Clerici who has to murder an anti-fascist professor in Il conformista† It gives an ominous undertone to the role of a man for whom an atrocity is perhaps the best way to feel invisible.
alienation
Trintignant worked with almost all the great European directors of the twentieth century. His most dreamy role was probably in the nouvelle vague film Mon chez Maud (1969) by Éric Rohmer, and in all that romantic French chatter he managed to portray a doubting figure. Other unforgettable performances: the Oscar-winning political drama z (1969) by Costa Gavras, La nuit de Varennes (1982) by Ettore Scola and Three Colors Red (1994) by Krzysztof Kieslowksi, as well as a series of crime films in which he starred in the 1970s, always infusing an element of existential alienation.
His last significant role was in Les plus belles années d’une vie in 2019, the third time he played the role of his namesake Jean-Louis under the direction of Claude Lelouch. In the two Oscar-winning Un homme et une femme gets to know the recently widowed racing driver Jean-Louis widow Anne, in Les plus belles années they look back on their love, their lives and their memories. His look is mild, full of chuckles. Have his eyes ever smiled so much? Is it joy or confusion at the absurdity of life? We have seen so many forms of introspection on his face, but also now, the last time he turns the mirror towards the viewer.