Actor Jean

AND’ died at 91 years the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. (ANSA CINEMA SHEET) His family makes it known.

Was a symbol of France, of its theater and cinema. Born in the tiny French town of Piolenc in Provence on 11 December 1930, he had a career spanning over 70 years, a true sacred monster, whose private life was marked by many tragedies, first of all that of the violent death of his daughter Marie killed by her partner Bertrand Cantat in 2003. He had officially retired from the scene in 2018, announcing almost nonchalantly that he had to fight against a tumor that sucked his strength. “In the first days I decided to fight – he said – but then I became a bit lazy, I let myself be looked after and wait. I no longer feel safe, I always need someone to support me and above all I feel old and useless” .

Instead in 2019 he had succumbed to the call of an old friend Claude Lelouch to get back together with Anouk Aime’ and for the awaited return of the characters of “A Man and a Woman” which in 1966 were awarded the Palme d’Or and gave Trintignant worldwide success. The Cannes Film Festival applauded “The Best Years of Our Lives”, somewhere between fiction and public confession, but there was some sadness hidden by the glitter of flashlights on the red carpet.

The inimitable romantic pilot Jean-Louis of “A Man and a Woman” was born in Piolenc. His father is a small industrialist, son and grandson of a family of racing drivers who make no secret of his socialist sympathies: he militates in the Resistance and later will be mayor of the town. The mother is a robust lady of the lower middle class, married in an arranged marriage, the protagonist of a love story with a German soldier who will mark her relationship with her husband and the early childhood of her son who witnesses his parents’ quarrels and is often forced to dress as a woman to comply with the wish of the mother who wanted a daughter after her firstborn.

Mrs. Trintignant – so Jean-Louis told it – is passionate and romantic, loves tragedy, adores Racine and encourages him to act as a boy in the local staging of “L’Arlesienne”. A law student, Trintignant went to Paris and found his first roles in the theatre, but in 1955 he made his first tests in the cinema: three films in one year including “And God created woman” with Brigitte Bardot directed by Roger Vadim. The success of the film also reflects on him, Vadim calls him back for “Dangerous Liaisons”, the producers use him as a bargaining chip for frequent co-productions with Italy. He then lands in Cinecitta ‘for “Estate violenta” by Valerio Zurlini (1959), the mythological “Antinea” and finally, almost by chance, Dino Risi chooses him to team up with Vittorio Gassmann in “Il sorpasso” (1962).

In his career Trintignant has played over 120 roles, he has acted with the greatest (from Cavalier to Costa Gavras, from Bertolucci to Scola, from Robbe-Grillet to Chabrol, from Rohmer to Deray, from Truffaut to Kieslowski), up to Michael Haneke which brought him back to a set after years of silence following the death of his beloved daughter Marie.

In the theater he has acted tragedy and comedy, declaimed Pre’vert at least 2000 times, surpassed all the interpreters of his generation and remained in the hearts of spectators for memorable films. Besides “Il sorpasso” and “A man and a woman” we cannot forget at least: “Z – the orgy of power”, “Put one evening to dinner”, “My night with Maud”, “The conformist”, “The Sunday Woman”, “The Desert of the Tartars”, “The Terrace”, “Finally Sunday”, “Film Rosso” up to the final diptych “Amour” and “Happy End”, repeatedly confirming a mutual love with the Italian cinema.

But the constant is that subdued, melancholic and gentle trait which is his most recurring signature. Costa Gavras even put a pair of dark “Z” glasses on him to accentuate the happily ordinary trait of his presence. And in the end he regretted it because in far too many scenes Trintignant seemed to disappear from the screen, intimidated into the crowd. But this is exactly what attracts the actor: a way of being that doesn’t appear, that doesn’t get noticed and for this reason makes him become intimate with the spectator. And he won the prize at Cannes. Trintignant didn’t like glamour, awards, gossip and also for this reason he always recognized himself in directors like Lelouch (who draws attention to himself) or his first wife, Nadine, who was his first accomplice . For this he loved more than all the theater.

Actor Jean-Louis Trintignant dies at 91 – Cinema