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Jean-Louis Trintignant, great figure of French cinema, dies at 91

2022-06-17T17:57:59.956Z


The interpreter, winner of the César for 'Love' and mythical face of European films such as 'A man and a woman', 'Rojo', 'Z' or 'The great silence', suffered from prostate cancer


French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant has died at the age of 91.

According to a statement from his wife, Marianne Hoepfner, the interpreter of films such as

Three Colors: Red

, Z or

The Great Silence

has died of prostate cancer.

Almost four years ago, in July 2018, Trintignant decided to say goodbye to him.

He couldn't anymore.

"I think the cinema is over for me," he announced in an interview in the newspaper

Nice Matin

.

“I don't fight.

She let things happen.

There is a doctor from Marseille who is going to try something new.

But I do not do chemotherapy, although he was already prepared, ”he assured.

Until then, he had become a titan of European cinema.

Jean-Paul Belmondo or Alain Delon may have been more famous, but Trintignant moved better with elegance and silences.

With a majestic physique and a nose for choosing scripts (or being open to the projects that came to him and that made him temporarily leave his beloved theater), the careers of filmmakers like Lelouch, Haneke or Costa-Gavras would not be the same if he had not been there French actor.

Jean-Louis Trintignant, great figure of French cinema, has died at the age of 91.

The interpreter, who had retired in 2018, suffered from cancer.

In the image, the actor in 'My night with Maud'.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert attend the 'Amour' screening during the 65th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2012. Dominique Charriau (WireImage)

Jean-Louis Trintignant, in 'Three Colors: Red', from 1994 and directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva in 'Love', a 2012 film directed by Michael Haneke, which received an Oscar and a Golden Globe, among other awards.

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Vittorio Gassman in 'The Escape', a 1962 Italian film directed by Dino Risi.

Palme d'Or winners for 'Amour' Emmanuelle Riva, Michael Haneke and Jean-Louis Trintignant pose during the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Stephane Cardinale - Corbis (Corbis via Getty Images)

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée in 'The Most Beautiful Years of a Life', from 2019. Maillard.

Lucy

An image from 'Happy End' (2017), by Michael Haneke.

Jean-Louis Trintignant is second from the left.

allocine

That interview served as both an announcement and a review of his career and his fears, both those related to his age and his cancer and those experienced throughout a career of 120 titles and half a century, and the pain caused by the murder of his daughter, also an actress Marie Trintignant, 41, at the hands of her partner, the musician Bertrand Cantat, in the summer of 2003. "I've been dead for 15 years," he told

Nice Matin

.

“I have lived through two dramas that affected me a lot.

Especially the last one, that of my daughter Marie.

And when I say I'm dead, that's what I mean."

Of his overwhelming career, he said that he still felt surprised.

“I am extremely shy (…) I was not cut out for a job in public,” he assured.

“Besides, fame never interested me too much.

The first time, it's funny.

But then not anymore."

Curious reflection for someone who started on stage and who at the beginning of the 21st century put it before the cinema.

“I just refused to work on a Bruno Dumont movie.

It was interesting, but I'm afraid I'm not up to it physically.

I no longer move alone, I always need someone by my side to tell me: be careful, there is a piece of furniture in front of you, you're going to get hit, ”he said, not without a certain irony.

In that 2018 he had already stopped leaving home.

“I can't read, because I'm going blind.

And the books were a great pleasure.

I watch TV, I listen to music, I sleep a lot.

I stay on the sofa

reflecting on the good and bad things.

Without boredom, luckily."

From the beginning of his career, Jean-Louis Trintignant put a face to the concerns of the European culture of his time, at least to the obsessions that fueled the creativity of French and Italian filmmakers (although he was always dubbed in that language).

The son of a bourgeois family, two of his uncles were racing drivers, and that family passion was reflected in his character in

A Man and a Woman

(1966), by Claude Lelouch: the actor changed the script so that his role would go from doctor to pilot.

Born in Piolenc, near Avignon, in 1930, at the age of 20 he moved to Paris to study acting.

A year later he had already made his debut in the theater, where he achieved a certain prestige and Roger Vadim gave him a great opportunity in the cinema: together with Brigitte Bardot he starred in

And God Created Woman.

The title changed the lives of all three.

Bardot, who was already known, became a world star, Trintignant appeared from nowhere to become one of the masculine faces of French cinema, and Vadim saw before his eyes how his wife, Bardot, and Trintignant began a romantic relationship.

By the way, the actor was also married to actress Stéphane Audran

(The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie).

Both marriages broke up.

Trintignant, however, had his career cut short by having to do military service.

He served in Algiers and on his return, Vadim, who did not hold a grudge against him, hired him for

Dangerous Relations,

his version of the epistolary book by Choderlos de Laclos, from 1959. Three years later he would star in another of the mythical titles of European cinema,

The Escape (El sorpasso),

along with Vittorio Gassman, with which Dino Risi made a satire of Italian reality, and a sharp reflection on the masculinity of the moment with the journey of two friends, one more timid, the other more playful and unbridled through Tuscany.

Four years later came

A Man and a Woman,

with Anouk Aimée.

That romantic blockbuster based on the relationship between two widowers to the rhythm of composer Francis Lai's "dabadabada", had a sequel in 1986 and a late third part: until 2019 Lelouch did not dare to face that film,

The most beautiful years of a life ,

because the one from 1986 had left a bad taste in his mouth.

At its premiere in Spain, the director pointed out: “Time has acted like a miracle.

I don't make them, although I know how to film them when they arrive.

When I looked at Jean-Louis and Anouk I felt like continuing to shoot them.

Jean-Louis has had a complicated life, terrible things have happened to him, including the murder of his daughter.

If there is someone who can tell us about life, it is him.

The truth resonates in his voice, he cannot lie.

He is incapable of saying anything he doesn't mean.

The whole movie is grounded in his voice.”

More information

Jean-Louis Trintignant says goodbye to cinema and begins to say goodbye to life

Along with that actor from sentimental dramas,

thrillers

or big productions such as

Is Paris Burning?, The Attack

or

Funeral in Los Angeles

, there was also the most political Trintignant, that of

El conformista

(1970), by Bernardo Bertolucci and his analysis of fascism;

or that of

Z,

by Costa-Gavras (best actor at Cannes).

He shot non-stop during the sixties and seventies in both Italy and France.

Even in English,

The Great Silence

(1968), by Sergio Corbucci, master of the

spaghetti western,

in which he worked on the condition that his character be mute and thus not have to learn the dialogues.

That same year she won the Silver Bear in Berlin for best performance for

The Man Who Lies.

Little by little he became disillusioned with the cinema.

To this was added various health ailments arising after a car accident.

He was much more selective in his appearances: with Fanny Ardant he appeared in Truffaut's last film,

Alive Sunday

(1983), and Krzysztof Kieslowski called him for

Three Colors: Red

(1994).

Of these last works,

those who love me will take the train

(1998), by Patrice Chéreau, stands out.

After the death of his daughter, in 2003, only the Austrian-German Michael Haneke —in addition to the aforementioned third part of

A Man and a Woman—

could count on his talent.

First in

Love

(2012), a hymn to life in a film that talks about death and with which Trintignant finally won the César award.

In this movie, Haneke wrote one of his best sentences about his life: "I'll go from bad to worse and then it'll be over."

And five years later, in

Happy End,

in which his character, anchored in a wheelchair, longs for death, and asks his family, his friends and even strangers on the street to help him die, until he manages to submerge himself in the sea in a ramp in Calais.

It's not his on-screen ending, nor Trintignant's in life, but it did illustrate the spirit of a man devastated in real life by the murder of his daughter.

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2022-06-17

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