The best Jean-Louis Trintignant’s thriller 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".
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.
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.
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 Assassination
7/10
Sadiel, rebel leader in a North African state, takes refuge in Switzerland in the aftermath of a coup. Aware of the threat posed by Sadiel, the ruthless Colonel Kassar contacts the French security services to help in capturing the political activist. A police informer, Darien, is forced to lure Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to make a television coverage about the Third World. Arriving in Paris, Sadiel is captured and delivered to his opponents. Disgusted by the way he has been manipulated, Darien tries to turn back the clock, unknowing who’s dealing with.
The Crook
6.9/10
A thief known as Simon the Swiss faces up and downs in his criminal profession.
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.
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.
So Sweet... So Perverse
6/10
Industrialist Jean is living a jet set life in late sixties Paris. Things are not so well at home with his frigid wife Danielle. He meets their new neighbour, Nicole, and they become lovers. But she has a sadistic ex-boyfriend, Klaus, which keeps showing up. It soon transpires that Danielle and Nicole are conspiring against Jean, Klaus being the hitman hired to murder him.
Trans-Europ-Express
7/10
A film director, Jean, his producer, Marc, and his assistant, Lucette, board the Trans-Europ-Express in Paris bound for Antwerp. Once in their compartment it occurs to them that the drama of life aboard the train presents possibilities for a film, and they begin to write a script about dope smuggling. Subsequently, they see actor Jean-Louis Trintignant walking through the station. As seen through the eyes of Jean, Marc, and Lucette, Trintignant becomes Elias, the chief character in the script. Elias is going to Antwerp to pick up a suitcase of cocaine for delivery to an international organization based in Paris.
Le Secret
6.7/10
A stranger enters into and forever alters the life of a couple. He claims to be pursued by certain authorities who intend to prevent him from disclosing a secret that only he holds, whence the title. Is he lying, or insane - or is he telling the truth? Who, if anyone, is after him? And what *is* - the secret?
Long Live Life
6.1/10
The movie starts with an interview with director Claude Lelouch. He pleads viewers not to disclose the plot of the movie after leaving the projection room. Even the movie's trailer shows only a long sequence of faces gazing speechlessly in space. "Like all my movies, this one is about a man and a woman", says Lelouch in the interview.
The Outside Man
6.5/10
A French hit man is hired by a crime family to end the life of a rival mobster, but things fall apart when the boss who hired him is killed.
Défense de savoir
5.7/10
When the police find Simone seated near her husband's corpse it is predictable that she is charged with the murder. Jean-Pierre Laubray is appointed counsel for the defence. He begins an inquiry into the case and he finds out that the murdered man had killed a barman in a robbery the night before. He finds out as well he was a leg-man of Cristiani's for his election campaign. He tries to contact Juliette, Cristiani's daughter, and he discovers that also Bruno, Juliette's brother, died that same night in a car accident...
La crime
5.7/10
Deadly Sweet
5.6/10
Bernard meets Jane in a Night Club, in London, and he likes her. Her father was killed in a car accident, but Jane thinks he has been killed because he was blackmailed for a picture of his second wife, Jane's mother in law. In the same Night Club Bernard finds the blackmailer corpse and Jane near him, but he believes she is innocent. So Bernard and Jane run away followed by a dwarf, the blackmailer's men, who believe Bernard killed their boss and of course, the Police. They believe that Jerome, Jane's brother, can help them to solve the case. But Jane doesn't know where he is, or so she says. Corpse after corpse, Bernard will find out the truth. But will the truth help him?
Rain over Santiago
6.6/10
A semi-fictional account on the fatidic September 11, 1973, when the military commanded by General Pinochet took over the power from socialist president Salvador Allende, initiating a dictatorship that lasted until 1988 causing the deaths and disappearances of many people.
The Passengers
6.3/10
A man and his stepson driving across Europe are terrorized by a man following them in a pickup truck.
I Kill, You Kill
5.7/10
Six sketches with as many ways of murdering someone, and getting away with it.
See How They Fall
6.5/10
Simon is a sales representative about fifty. When Mickey, his cop friend, is being shot, he leaves everything to find the murderers. Two years before, Marx, an old gambler, met Frederic, a young man that does not look very smart and started to follow him everywhere (as a puppy) and changed his name to Johnny to please Marx. Of course, Simon's story is related with Marx and Johnny's one. But the thriller is only a pretext for a psychological description of the three main characters.
Death Laid an Egg
5.9/10
A love triangle develops between three people who run a high tech chicken farm. It involves Anna (who owns the farm), her husband Marco (who kills prostitutes in his spare time) and Gabriella (the very beautiful secretary). Marco continues to kill as jealousy becomes more prevalent on the farm.
