The best Jean-Louis Trintignant’s movies
Jean-Louis Trintignant (born 11 December 1930) is a French actor who has enjoyed an international acclaim. He won the Best Actor Award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.
Trintignant was born in Piolenc, Vaucluse, France, the son of Claire (née Tourtin) and Raoul Trintignant, an industrialist. At the age of twenty, Trintignant moved to Paris to study drama, and made his theatrical debut in 1951 going on to be seen as one of the most gifted French actors of the post-war era. After touring in the early 1950s in several theater productions, his first motion picture appearance came in 1955 and the following year he gained stardom with his performance opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman.
Trintignant’s acting was interrupted for several years by mandatory military service. After serving in Algiers, he returned to Paris and resumed his work in film. He had the leading male role in the classic A Man and a Woman, which at the time was the most successful French film ever screened in the foreign market.
In Italy, he was always dubbed into Italian, and his work stretched into collaborations with renowned Italian directors, including Sergio Corbucci in The Great Silence, Valerio Zurlini in Violent Summer and The Desert of the Tartars, Ettore Scola in La terrazza, Bernardo Bertolucci in The Conformist, and Dino Risi in the cult film The Easy Life.
Throughout the 1970s, Trintignant starred in numerous films and in 1983 he made his first English language feature film, Under Fire. Following this, he starred in François Truffaut's final film, Confidentially Yours, and reprised his best-known role in the sequel A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later.
In 1994, he starred in Krzysztof Kieślowski's last film, Three Colors: Red.
Though he takes an occasional film role, he has, as of late, been focusing essentially on his stage work.
After a 14-year gap, Trintignant came back on screen for Michael Haneke's film Amour. Haneke had sent Trintignant the script, which had been written specifically for him. Trintignant said that he chooses which films he works in on the basis of the director, and said of Haneke that "he has the most complete mastery of the cinematic discipline, from technical aspects like sound and photography to the way he handles actors".
Three Colors: Red
8.1/10
Valentine, a student model in Geneva, struggles with a possessive boyfriend and a troubled family. When she runs over a dog, she discovers that its owner, a retired judge, is illegally wiretapping and eavesdropping on his neighbors' phone calls. Although Valentine is outraged, she develops a strange bond with the judge – and as the two become closer, she finds herself caught in the middle of events that could change her life.
The City of Lost Children
7.5/10
A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.
A Man and a Woman
7.5/10
A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that each is a widow.
Amour
7.9/10
Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.
Is Paris Burning?
6.8/10
Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he cannot maintain control of the city. After much contemplation Choltitz decides to ignore his orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a resistance leader organize his forces.
...And God Created Woman
6.3/10
Juliette Hardy is sexual dynamite, and has the men of a French coastal town panting. But Antoine, the only man who affects her likewise, wouldn't dream of settling down with a woman his friends consider the town tramp.
Flic Story
6.9/10
The film story depicts Emile Buisson, following the death of his wife and child, escaping from a psychiatric institution in 1947 and returning to Paris. Buisson, who three years later would become France's public enemy number one, begins a murderous rampage through the French capital.
The Conformist
7.9/10
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
My Night at Maud's
7.8/10
The rigid principles of a devout Catholic man are challenged during a one-night stay with Maud, a divorced woman with an outsize personality.
Z
8.2/10
Repression is the rule of the day in this film that skewers Greek governance of the 1960s. Z, a leftist rabble rouser, is killed in what appears to be a traffic accident. But given the political climate, the death of such a prominent activist raises troubling questions. Though it's too late to save Z's life, a postmortem examination suggests that the ruling party was behind his death. As the facts leak out, those who tell the truth pay the price for their honesty.
Il Sorpasso
8.2/10
Roberto, a shy law student in Rome, meets Bruno, a forty-year-old exuberant, capricious man, who takes him for a drive through the Roman and Tuscany countries in the summer. When their journey starts to blend into their daily lives though, the pair’s newfound friendship is tested.
The Great Silence
7.7/10
A mute gunslinger fights in the defense of a group of outlaws and a vengeful young widow, against a group of ruthless bounty hunters.
Under Fire
7/10
Three U.S. journalists (Nick Nolte, Joanna Cassidy, Gene Hackman) get too close to one another and their work in 1979 Nicaragua.
Successive Slidings of Pleasure
6.2/10
A young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, and a pair of scissors impaled through her heart, as she lay attached to the bedposts. Apparently, the girl does have powers, to make all people around her fall prey to her spell, glissing progressively into desire, lust, and the unknown.
The Best Years of a Life
6.7/10
They knew each other long ago: a man and a woman whose dazzling and unexpected romance captured in the now-iconic film, revolutionized our understanding of love. Today, the former race car driver seems lost in the pathways of his memory. In order to help him, his son seeks out the woman his father wasn’t able to cherish but whom he constantly revisits in his thoughts and dreams. Anne reunites with Jean-Louis and their story picks up where they left it…
Happy End
6.6/10
A well-to-do French family living in Calais deal with a series of setbacks and crises while paying little attention to the grim conditions in the refugee camps within a few miles of their home.
The Desert of the Tartars
7.5/10
Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.
The Libertine
5.4/10
A sexy widow discovers her late husband had a secret apartment where he cheated on her. Now she decides to use the same apartment to explore her own sexuality.
Deep Water
6.7/10
On the island of Jersey, off the French coast, Mélanie, a beautiful woman gifted with a captivating personality, enjoys having unimportant love affairs that her husband Victor, a perfumer older than her, seems to endure with total indifference.
Confidentially Yours
7.2/10
Claude Massoulier is murdered while hunting at the same place as Julien Vercel, an estate agent who knew him and whose fingerprints are found on Massoulier's car. As the police discover that Marie-Christine Vercel, Julien's wife, was Massoulier's mistress, Julien is the prime suspect. But his secretary, Barbara Becker, while not quite convinced he is innocent, defends him and leads her private investigations.
