Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022)

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hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Passages

#1 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:23 am

Jean-Louis Trintignant

(per La Bibliothèque de la Cinémathèque française)

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Fred Holywell
Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:45 pm

Re: Passages

#2 Post by Fred Holywell » Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:38 pm

hearthesilence wrote:
Fri Jun 17, 2022 11:23 am
Jean-Louis Trintignant

(per La Bibliothèque de la Cinémathèque française)
Jean-Louis Trintignant, French Star With a Gift for Introspection, Dies at 91

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domino harvey
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Re: Passages

#3 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jun 17, 2022 1:50 pm

Damn, I just watched his new doc a few weeks ago. One of the absolute greats

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JSC
Joined: Thu May 16, 2013 9:17 am

Re: Passages

#4 Post by JSC » Fri Jun 17, 2022 4:20 pm

Seconded. The number of great films this man has acted in is amazing.
My Night at Maud's and Three Colors: Red having made a huge
impression on me many years ago.

Also, I quite enjoyed his film (as director) A Full Day's Work

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L.A.
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Re: Passages

#5 Post by L.A. » Fri Jun 17, 2022 5:26 pm

R.I.P. to Jean-Louis.

Perhaps one of the last legendary French actors who is still with us is Alain Delon.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Passages

#6 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Jun 17, 2022 6:47 pm

Jean-Pierre Léaud maybe? And of course Catherine Deneuve.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Passages

#7 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:09 pm

Marina Vlady?

fiendishthingy
Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2020 1:55 pm

Re: Passages

#8 Post by fiendishthingy » Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:32 pm

There are also Brigitte Bardot and Anouk Aimée. I'm drawing a blank on other major male actors from that era beyond Delon and Léaud.

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022)

#9 Post by beamish14 » Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:39 pm

fiendishthingy wrote:
Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:32 pm
There are also Brigitte Bardot and Anouk Aimée. I'm drawing a blank on other major male actors from that era beyond Delon and Léaud.
I thought Michel Piccoli for a moment, but then I remembered

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Passages

#10 Post by zedz » Sun Jun 19, 2022 5:42 pm

fiendishthingy wrote:
Fri Jun 17, 2022 7:32 pm
There are also Brigitte Bardot and Anouk Aimée. I'm drawing a blank on other major male actors from that era beyond Delon and Léaud.
And Bulle Ogier and Corrine Marchand. I feel like we're jinxing a whole lot of innocent* people by just mentioning them!

* Alain Delon probably isn't innocent.

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diamonds
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2016 2:35 pm

Re: Passages

#11 Post by diamonds » Sun Jun 19, 2022 6:44 pm

At any rate Delon won't be around for too much longer, he's opted to undergo euthanasia.

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domino harvey
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Re: Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022)

#12 Post by domino harvey » Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:39 pm

Watched one of Trintignant's two directorial efforts, Le maître-nageur (1978), and it was not like anything I expected from him. This is one of the weirdest comedies I've ever seen. I'm not sure it's conventionally funny (I don't know that I even laughed once), but it is so admirably strange that I appreciated it nevertheless. The film presents us a fantasia of Stefania Sandrelli, whose dreams always come true and therefore she marries Guy Marchand's small-time traveling singer because she saw him in her dreams. This could be a great set-up for a comedy, and JLT surely knows that and yet nevertheless he abandons this almost immediately and turns the focus almost solely to Marchand's employment as the titular lifeguard by a bizarre "zillionaire" played by Moustache, looking exactly like the bad guy from Sonic the Hedgehog

Image

But after two narrative stops and starts, we realize that Jean-Claude Brialy is actually the star of the film as Moustache's all-knowing valet who delights in tormenting Marchand, allegedly on Moustache's behalf. This is a movie where the rich guy in the wheelchair challenges Marchand to a swimming contest while remaining motionless in his wheelchair and declaring himself winner after Marchand swims the entire lap, to give you some idea of the kind of anti-comedy we're working with. Actually, I think this would be a pretty successful film for the Adult Swim set. Who knew this was where Trintignant's mind would go when given the reins?

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domino harvey
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Re: Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022)

#13 Post by domino harvey » Mon Jan 22, 2024 1:20 pm

Trintignant's first directorial effort, Une journée bien remplie (1973) is similar in tone to Le maître-nageur but its weirdness is more confined within the schematic narrative than in the later film. Once again we have a truly askance comic worldview at play: the film follows humble baker Jacques Dufilho as he systematically executes all 9 members of the jury that convicted his son of murder in a variety of Wile E Coyote ways. But the only real moments of humor that work here are the couple of fake-outs when Trintignant focuses on the seeming murder set-up and then undercuts it, with the rest suffering from admirable but unsuccessful oddness that never overcomes itself. Some feeble attempts at meta-humor (The radio DJ in Vittorio Caprioli's car announces that the song playing is his death tune from Une journée bien remplie, Doniol-Valcroze pops up as the worst Hamlet I've ever seen, &c) fall mostly flat as well. If Truffaut couldn't get this kind of narrative to work five years prior, I don't know why anyone thought Trintignant had a better shot. However, both of Trintignant's works have one thing in common: I can not imagine how either received funding, because who is the audience for these movies?! (And along those lines-- why would KLSC license this one?)

kubelkind
Joined: Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:42 pm

Re: Jean-Louis Trintignant (1930-2022)

#14 Post by kubelkind » Tue Jan 23, 2024 11:13 am

Recall both highly enjoying and being dumbfounded by both of JLT's directed films, though its been a while and I don't recall a lot. Good excuse to revisit, I guess. I think I tagged Une journée bien remplie as "a giallo as directed by Tati", which I guess is catchy if not entirely accurate. As for "how they got funded", it seems to be almost a tradition that acclaimed French actors manage to get a shot or two at direction if they want. Maybe it is a way of keeping 'em sweet, or a hope that the prestige they have accrued in the acting field will rub off and attract viewers, who knows. What struck me is that most of the results are, well, "actorly", in the Cassavettes mode (Jean-Francois Stevenin and Anna Karina's films spring to mind, and I like those too). But that is not one tiny bit the case with Trintignant's bizarre pair.

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