best film: The Conformist is a visual high wire act from Bernardo Bertolucci. It is easily Bertolucci’s most formidable effort (and that is saying something because 1900 and Last Tango in Paris are excellent films). The Conformist does not work nearly as well without Jean-Louis Trintignant in full command in front of the camera. Behind The Conformist, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red is a towering achievement in 1990s cinema. Éric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s (1969) is a worthy 3rd place bronze medal winner.
best performance: The Conformist. Jean-Louis Trintignant’s career spanned over fifty years (fifty-five years between A Man and a Woman and Happy End) but The Conformist is Trintignant at the height of his powers. It is the performance Harrison Ford could not quite pull off in Blade Runner – a sort of variation on film noir set atop a transcendent set design where the protagonist needs both strength and ambiguity. Trintignant moves confidently through this 113-minute cinematic painting backdrop.
Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marcello Clerici in The Conformist – the pinnacle of the careers of both Bertolucci and Trintignant
stylistic innovations/traits: Jean-Louis Trintignant could play a cerebral, internalized performance as well as anyone. He has done it in a pictorial masterpiece with Bertolucci, a very verbal film (it is verbal – but still rich subtext) with Rohmer, reflective moral film with Kieslowski, and now twice with Michael Haneke’s icy worldview. Trintignant’s style works as a sort of Clint Eastwood stoic model as well as evidenced in Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968). Trintignant’s name is “Silence” like Charles Bronson’s “Harmonica” in Once Upon a Time in the West (and Corbucci is using Sergio Leone’s Ennio Morricone here, too). Trintignant never speaks – and he is sublime. The film is largely humorless, the least pastiche of Corbucci’s films – the Trintignant scene where he makes love to the widow would not work at all in his other films and it is quite poignant here. Roman Polanski missed an opportunity by not casting Jean-Louis Trintignant in The Tenant in 1976 – a role Trintignant would have knocked out of the park. Like Alain Delon (Trintignant is five years older), he was a French actor really at the height of his fame and talents in the 1960s who never make an archiveable film with Truffaut or Godard — at least he made one fantastic film with Rohmer.
from My Night at Maude’s – Jean-Louis Trintignant’s character is never called by name in the entire film. From Rohmer’s Moral Tales series of films. Maud (Françoise Fabian) appears 25 minutes into the film (a common trait in Rohmer’s work – on top of it being seasonal – this is a very winter/Christmas-y film) . Trintignant excels at playing the intellectual – discussing Pascal and Mozart. This is one of those My Dinner with Andre films (more than a decade before of course) – a plotless, but endlessly fascinating one night conversation sort of (ok, it is more than one night, but still a short duration – minus the epilogue which is years later) film.
directors worked with: Michael Haneke (2), Sergio Corbucci (1), Éric Rohmer (1), Bernardo Bertolucci (1), Krzysztof Kieslowski (1). Haneke is Austrian (but born in Germany), Bertolucci is Italian of course, and Kieslowski is Polish – so three of the big four (Rohmer the exception) for Trintignant were with auteurs outside of France.
Michael Haneke’s Amour is his first film after 2009’s unbridled masterpiece The White Ribbon. Though the subject is severe – Georges, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, cares for his long-time wife Anne, played by Emmanuelle Riva, as her health rapidly declines – it is, in many ways, Haneke’s most plainly told, warm, and accessible film to date. Duration is used as a tool by Haneke. Trintignant has these brilliant, subtle changes over the course of the film. They life together is all captured in this Parisian apartment – these are intellectuals (like Woody Allen, most of Haneke’s characters have walls of books in their apartments), but ordinary people – in the clean design of their place with its ivory walls.
top five performances:
- The Conformist
- My Night at Maude’s
- Three Colours: Red
- Amour
- The Great Silence
Three Colours: Red – Trintignant as the cynical, retired judge opposite of Irene Jacob as Valentine. This is a meditation on fate and interconnectedness – falling books opening to certain pages and passages.
archiveable films
| 1962- Il Sorpasso |
| 1966- A Man and a Woman |
| 1968- The Great Silence |
| 1969- My Night at Maude’s |
| 1969- Z |
| 1970- The Conformist |
| 1983- Under Fire |
| 1994- Three Colours: Red |
| 2012- Amour |
| 2017- Happy End |
About that Trintignant casting in The Tenant, doesn’t the whole film/performance has a dark comedic vibe? And I haven’t seen Trintignant play a character with comedic humour. He has a lot of the characteristics to play the protagonist but feel like the whole film and tone has to be changed to suit his style. Including the ending.
How about someone like Albert Finney? Dirk Bogarde?
@Malith – I think Trintignant does have some dark comedic moments in The Comformist as a the fascist lapdog. Like when he walks up the stairs with his hands behind his back, or plays with the revolver, or accuses everyone else of being a facist etc…
Bogarde and James Mason would definitely be surefire picks for this film though.
@Drake-I certainly didn’t saw that sense of humour in Trintignant’s The Conformist performance. I was hoping for a different Trintignant performance I have not seen. Isn’t James Mason too old in 1976? I think if Finney can do Murder on the Orient Express he can certainly do some justice to The Tenant role here.
Academy Awards snubbed Trintignant at least 6 times. A Man and a Woman, Z, My Night at Maud’s, The Conformist, Three Colors: Red and Amour. Crazy. All of them are great films. And all of them were Oscar nominated in other categories.
Drake:
Have you seen The Sunday Woman? It’s only recently been made available on blu-ray, but it’s certainly worthy of being archivable at the very least I think. Mentioning this film was actually my initial motivation for crashing this page, but I got sidetracked. haha
@Remy- I have not, thank you for the recommendation – I’ll keep an eye out for it
Isn’t Trintignant’s age a bit of a problem for the Tenant(1976)? I mean he has to romance Isabelle Adjani who is 25 years his senior. Plus Polanski has kinda always looked younger than his age even now.
@Anderson- He still pulls it off (though he might be more suited in 1966 than 1976- just three years the senior of Polanski- but yes agreed on Polanski’s boyish looks.
@Alt Mash – quite right – thank you for pointing out the error
Hmm. I need to see the Great Silence from Corbucci in 1968. I love westerns. Looks like it is one of the best works from both Kinski and Trintignant. I wonder who actually gives the better performance here? Trintignant or Kinski?
Plus these are not actors normally associated with the Western genre. And I did not know about this film at all until this week.
@Anderson – not a lot of reviews here – but 14/14 and everyone seems like like it https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_great_silence_1968
So is The Last Silence(1968) what The Missouri Breaks(1976) should have been?
@Anderson – My notes are here https://thecinemaarchives.com/2020/05/23/the-great-silence-1968-corbucci/
It’s time to mention the elephant in the room. All of these foreign language actors has very few achievable films. Belmondo only 9. Trintignant only 10, Delon only has 11, Kinski only has 11. They have made their mark in film history but they are at a disadvantage because most of the good directors are native English language speakers. So the roles they can get are limited in good films.
@Maltih – there may be some truth here- but that’s a tough argument listing three actors who were French during the French New Wave – and a German speaking actor (Kinski) during the New German Cinema movement.
You’re right, German new wave was basically 3 directors R. W. Fassbinder, Herzog and Wim Wenders. Out of these, Wenders never made acting a huge showcase for his movies. Fassbinder made movies with great female parts so we have Hanna Schygulla and Herzog made films with Kinski so yeah Kinski has very few archiveable films as he didn’t work with either Fassbinder or Wenders.
As for these French actors, you’re right again it’s about 10 directors on fire during New Wave- Truffaut, Godard , Demy, Melville, Resnais, Malle, Chabrol, Rhomer, and few others. Out of these Truffaut, Godard , Demy, , Resnais, Malle, Chabrol did more films with female protagonists so very few leading male roles
Rhomer and especially Melville had roles for men so we have Delon or Ventura in his films.
For Italians again very few directors- Fellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Bertolucci.
Antonioni had female protagonists so we have Mastroianni, Delon and Trintignant from the cannon of other 3.
So the limited filmography has 3 reasons in my opinion
1. Fewer directors as compared to US. And ofc fewer overall films US.
2. A lot of directors from European countries have a lot films in with female leads. Unlike US ( The American new wave in 70s totally dominated by men juxtaposed to the French new wave dominated by women)
3. Rich period for French and Italian films didn’t last long – maybe late 50s to early 70s it’s less than 20 years.
German new wave began in early 70s kinda ended in early 80s with the tragic death of Fassbinder, Herzog not being able to match his peaks after Fitzcarraldo.
@M*A*S*H – Hmm, I get the overall point and I think there’s some truths there. There’s a lot going on in this comment though. There were plenty of good male roles in Germany in the 1970s and early 1980s and many prime role opportunities in the filmographies of both Wenders and Fassbinder. Same with the French auteurs. The devil’s advocate to your argument here or @Malith’s argument would be that if these actors did not come along at such a good time – we might not know who they are at all. Just about every actor on this list has a “what if” going one way and a “what if” going the other.
Yeah Bruno Ganz made movies with Herzog but again acting is not Herzog’s focus so Ganz’s overall resume is light.
I think most of these actors found a suitable auteur (the other way around actually) at a crucial time for both director and actor , so like Mastroianni and Fellini or even you can put Tony Leung into the discussion and WKW using him to explore certain themes but again outside WKW, Leung’s filmography is very light and the reason is lack of more number directors, who else he could’ve collaborated with. Yimou Zhang had female protagonists mostly and he did the brilliant Flowers of Shanghai with HHH. If you have 10, 15 Or 20 other auteurs from Hong Kong or China then Leung might have had more achievable films outside WKW. Also that rich period for Hong Kong/ Chinese cinema didn’t last long. Sadly it’s over. So it seems unlikely that Leung’s number of archiveable films will increase. I wanna see him work with Jia Zhangke. They’ll be perfect match.
I’m talking about Bruno Ganz and Wim Wenders.
@M*A*S*H- Like I said, every actor is going to have an excuse for why another actor gets more opportunities or doesn’t. I think only 3 of the top 10 female actors were born in the US or spoke English as their primary language- so, I don’t know that this excuse holds water.
@Drake- i think it does. As I said female actors from non english counties enjoyed greater roles than their male counterparts. Like if you look at the career of Jeanne Moreau, Anna Karina and Catherine Deneuve, all 3 had better careers than any of the male French actors. Liv Ullmann had a better Swedish career than Von Sydow Or Gunnar Björnstrand. Which current French male actor can match the resume and top performances of Huppert or Binoche. European Countries always provided female actors with better opportunities.
@M*A*S*H- Could be – this is just a theory of course. What happened happened. Conversely, it could be the French (or even European) auteurs want to work with the best actor regardless of sex and found Moreau, Karina, and Deneuve to be much more capable and talented than their male counterparts. I think even many male American actors would envy all the opportunities available to Jean-Louis Trintignant at this incredible time in cinema history. I bet Paul Newman wishes he could speak French during this era.
@Drake-You have got this all wrong. I said nothing about these foreign actors got lesser opportunities but more importantly lesser “amount” of opportunities to work in good films. Most of these new German movement or new French movement lasted for like 15 years or even lesser than that. Outside that these foreign English language speaking actors simply didn’t have much talented directors to collaborate with. So their amount of achievable films take a big hit here. Max Von Sydow is like the only one who had a successful career in English and managed to expand his achievable resume without Bergman
@Malith- Not at all- you might be making the wrong assumptions here. I acknowledged there is some truth to the opportunities- but this whole thing is riddled with oversimplifications and “what-if” indulgences.
@Drake-There is a trend here. And the results don’t lie. Most of these foreign language actors were hot for a very short period(mostly 1960’s, early 1970’s) and then had little to no archiveable films after that. I mean look at Trintignant. He only has what 4 archiveable films after The Conformist. And he has clearly shown in Amour and also Three Colours:Red that he lost none of his talent. But he simply didn’t had much depth of great directors to collaborate with. When he did the results were superb.
@Malith- There really isn’t anything here. I’ve examined it closely over the years.
Keep in mind, the major European actors also do a lot more theatre work than their American counterparts, which of course eats into their ability to act in films. Delon was never a big theatre guy I don’t think. Neither was Belmondo, but Trintignant and Piccoli most certainly were, not to mention all the British actors.
As for French actors with a comparable career to Binoche or Huppert, well there is Gerard Depardieu. Mathieu Amalric deserves to have that kind of career, but he doesn’t for some odd reason.
@LeRoi-Stillman’s Metropolitan too. Both Pale Flower and Metropolitan has high ratings.
@Drake-There are 2 different parts to this question here. First is the overall resume of these foreign language actors and second is the overall number of archiveable/good films they were part of. The what-if scenario you say largely only applies to the first part. There is no over simplification to the second part. These foreign language actors has a lesser amount of good directors/works to collaborate with compared to their English-speaking counterparts. And sometimes if they make a good/archiveable films they are often rarely seen or heard about compared to the films produced and released by major American studios
@Malith- No, not at all really – lots of variables and actors with more or less opportunities depending on the scenario. I’m sure there are many actors who wish they had all the doors opened to Delon that Delon had because of his looks.
@Malith. I think the answer may be a bit simpler. The reason some of these great foreign actors are in less films in the archives are not necessarily that they are in less archivable films (or that there were less great directors who they could work with), but that many of their films which are not at the masterpiece/great level (but are still good/very good) are not in the archives. American audiences (even discernible watchers) may have less exposure to many of their good films or may at least have a slight unintentional bias towards American films which are shown more often and more readily available at/on American cinemas/platforms/streaming services. The same applies to directors. There are many great/very good French directors from the 60/70s who were not part of the core New Wave group and who are seriously underrepresented here, eg. Pialat, Tavernier, Blier, Rozier, Sautet, Eustache, Deray, Lelouch, Berri etc. I can guarantee that if a European film connoisseur, using similar criteria and methodology as used here would prepare rankings, they would look quite different. Whilst at your MS/MP level, many of the great European films would be on the radar, at a R/HR level, however, it seems easier for a good/mid tier American film to be on the radar than a European one. A few examples to support this viewpoint:
Example 1: Gerard Depardieu not listed in the top 100
Based on talent Depardieu is a top10 actor of all time and with his resume, should be in the top20 alongside Delon and Trintignant. Some of Depardieu’s best work is with directors like Pialat and Blier. On a quick conservative count, Depardieu should have around 35 archivable films.
Example 2: Some legendary French actors who do not feature in the top100
Michel Piccoli, Yves Montand, Philippe Noiret, Vincent Cassel and Daniel Auteuil should all be shoe ins in a top 100, with other contenders in the conversation like Maurice Ronet, Serge Reggiani, Jean Rochefort, Patrick Dewaere etc
Example 3: Sophia Loren, Delphine Seyrig, Romy Schneider not included in the top 100 actress list behind people like Gwyneth Paltrow and Hilary Swank, whilst Isabelle Huppert is down at 63 when she is a top10 actress
Example 4: Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Maurice Pialat and Jacques Becker not listed in the top 250. Don’t want to pick on Tom (Cats) Hooper again, but there is no way if one would look back at film history in 50/100 years that he would be regarded as a greater director than a Rivette or Pialat.
Example 5 Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais behind a Robert Zemeckis and Anthony Minghella on the director list. Whilst Minghella and Zemeckis have 3/4 good films each, Rohmer has 20.
The other contributing factor may be the methodology when assessing acting, which does not look at the best acting only, but a narrower assessment of the best acting in the best archived films, which dilutes people like Huppert and Depardieu who are often also great in lesser works.
I’ve used French films as an example, but the same could apply to Italian and Spanish films.
Even from 80s/90s more modern French directors like Chereau, Kurys, Corneau, Leconte, Desplechin, Ozon (although not of the quality of the 60s/70s) are often overlooked.
@LeRoi – some good points here – but also some shaky (questionable at best) ones– pretty clear what films you have spent the majority of your time watching by reading your biases
@LeRoi-Good points. I don’t agree with all of them. Especially this.
“I can guarantee that if a European film connoisseur, using similar criteria and methodology as used here would prepare rankings, they would look quite different. Whilst at your MS/MP level, many of the great European films would be on the radar, at a R/HR level”
I don’t think the criteria when evaluating here is biased towards nationality at all. Regardless of what nationality the critic is. I find most of these European critics are even more biased towards their countries than Americans. For example Godard has many cult European fanatics who often overrates his work post the 1960’s.
“American audiences (even discernible watchers) may have less exposure to many of their good films or may at least have a slight unintentional bias towards American films which are shown more often and more readily available at/on American cinemas/platforms/streaming services”
But this is a very good point. I think the problem is many have not seen these World films not necessarily underrating them. And there are probably quite a few very good films by lesser known directors that are yet to be discovered as well.
My only exposure to Depardieu so far is 1900 and he didn’t really blew me away there. He came off bland/lacking charisma with his female love interest while De Niro was a league above him for most of the film. For European actors I greatly admire both Giancarlo Giannini(Seven Beauties, L’Innocente) and Helmut Berger(Ludwig, The Damned, Conversation Piece) and Silvana Mangano(Teorema, Conversation Piece) for actresses.
Laura Betti(1900, Teorema) and Romolo Valli looked impressive to me as well (1900, The Leopard) but they are more character actors.
@Drake and @Malith. I’m not from Europe – only used French films as an example as it was the easiest. I’m not saying there is any intentional national favouritism, but that there would naturally be an inherent unintentional greater weighting towards American / English language film due to exposure, availability, marketing, publications etc. This would not be that apparent at the top level as many of the great European films would have a high profile, but more at the level of films in the good/very good range, where they may not have won prizes at international film festivals or otherwise be distributed/available in the US. I’ve also watched many more American films than French ones, but am always trying to fill the gaps / blindspots to avoid missing out on exposure to potential great films/auteurs out there (although limited by what one can find on Criterion, Mubi, local DVD store etc)
@LeRoi- My apologies on assuming where you are from- I stand corrected- I’ll change my comment. I just know the majority of them have been in support of French cinema – almost exclusively – for some reason. Like I said, there is some truth here- the Sophia Loren example is solid (I think your one example in your last comment that wasn’t French – which seems telling). She will be on the next update of the top 100 female actors of all-time. A good argument for her cause would look like this- “Sophia Loren doesn’t get a mention in 1977 for A Special Day and she should”. There just isn’t enough direct sort of evidence here in the rest of the critiques of the website to sort of warrant investigation/defense.
I think another misconnect- is that a bunch of “films in the good/very good range” would change things on the rankings. They won’t.
@LeRoi-Do you have a list of films few have heard of but you think are great? Doesn’t necessarily have to be European/American/English. Just in general.
@Drake. Thanks for the response. The reason why I used French cinema as an example was because of the original comment in the thread from Malith regarding the French New Wave and limited number of films in the archives from Trintignant and Belmondo, i.e. saying that they are limited from getting good roles because “most of the good directors are native English language speakers”. I disagreed with this and believe French cinema icons (or at least certain contributors) are somewhat under-represented or underrated in the rankings.
I know I have not substantiated all my examples and happy to add motivations to any if you are interested.
To refer for example to Michel Picolli, whose body of work is vast and often includes supporting roles, I think he should be included on the basis of his work in Contempt (Godard), the Big Feast (Ferreri), la Belle Noiseuse (Rivette), Le Doulos (Melville), Belle du Jour (Bunuel), Young Girls of Rochefort (Demy), Blood Wedding (Chabrol), Vincent, Francois, Paul et les autres (Sautet), Spoiled Children (Tavernier) and others. Quoting from a tribute to him:
“Piccoli’s is surely one of the most remarkable careers in the history of the cinema. His talent and commitment enabled many filmmakers to do their very best work, and the esteem in which his collaborative services was held is clear from the directors listed in his filmography; among others, he worked (in many cases repeatedly) with Angelopoulos, Bava, Bellocchio, Berlanga, Buñuel, Carax, Cavalier, Cavani, Chabrol, Chahine, Clouzot, Deville, Costa-Gavras, Demy, Ferreri, Godard, Iosseliani, Malle, Melville, Moretti, de Oliveira, Resnais, Renoir, Rivette, Ruiz, Sautet, Suleiman, Tavernier, Varda – and Hitchcock.”
To pick another random example, I would say Sandrine Bonnaire deserves mentions in the archives in 1983 (A Nos Amours), 1985 (Vagabond) and 1995 (La Ceremonie). Very few people could have played those roles with that level of vulnerability, sense of recklessness and natural ease (apart from Huppert perhaps). I still need to see Joan the Maid and Monsieur Hire.
@LeRoi- Love this – impressive work here- thank you for sharing the details. Do you have a year or years where Picolli gives one of the best performances of the year? Or for him it is just an accumulation of his body of work? For Bonnaire I have seen 2 of the 3 (missing A Nos Amours) and even have a page for Vagabond on the site. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t warrant consideration – but until I catch them again (or A Nos Amours for the first time)- I don’t see enough to support her case against the 100 on the list.
If I’m a little defensive I just think the whole argument falls apart when you look at the top 100 female actors of all-time list- I believe, 4 french-born female actors are listed in the top 8 spots.
@Malith. Just to clarify, do you want me to only mention examples of good films which are not in the archives at all or ones which may be underrated in the archives (of course in my personal view)?
“good films which are not in the archives”
Mostly this. Especially if you think they are great not just worth a watch.
@Malith. Here are a few not in the archives (obviously I agree with most of the ones in the archives which I’ve seen). Not all necessarily in the ‘great’ category, but quite a few are.
1930s – Remember the Night (Leisen)
1950s – Casque d’Or (Becker)
1960s – Pale Flower (Shinoda), L’Enfance Nue (Pialat), The Soft Skin (Truffaut), Le Trou (Becker)
1970s – Scum (Clarke), Cria Cuervos (Saura), Two-Lane Blacktop (Hellman), La grande bouffe (Ferreri), the Clockmaker (Tavernier)
1980s – Repentance (Abuladze), Violent Cop (Kitano), A Nos Amours (Pialat), Manon des Sources (Berri), Falling Down (Schumacher), Chocolat (Denis), Metropolitan (Stillman), the Aviator’s Wife (Rohmer), Betty Blue (Beineix)
1990s – Jacob’s Ladder (Lyne), La Vie de Jesus (Dumont), Jesus’ Son (Maclean)
2000s – Lust Caution (Lee), Dead Man’s Shoes (Meadows), Mesrine (Richet), I’ve Loved You So Long (Claudel), Swimming Pool (Ozon), Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa)
2020s – As Bestas (Sorogoyen), Godland (Palmason)
A few films on my current watchlist not currently in archives:
1960s Marketa Lazarova (Vlacil), Adieu Philippine (Rozier), Serie Noire (Corneau)
1970s The Mother and the Whore (Eustache), The Man Who Sleeps (Queysanne)
1980s Coup de Torchon (Tavernier)
1990s Sonatine (Kitano), A Heart in Winter (Sautet)
2010s: Li’l Quinquin (Dumont), Evolution (Hadzihalilovic)
@Drake. For Piccoli, I would probably say he deserves inclusion for his body of work. His performances in Mepris (1963) and la Belle Noiseuse (1991) were great and I have A Leap in the Dark, Dillinger is Dead and Strange Affair on my watchlist, but the argument is stronger based on his entire body of work – say like a Willem Dafoe or Ralph Fiennes who normally improves anything they are in.
@LeRoi- Thanks for sharing. I have a mention for Piccoli in 1963 and have seen la Belle Noiseuse – https://thecinemaarchives.com/2020/08/21/la-belle-noiseuse-1991-rivette/ I just think Piccoli is that one big performance away. He’s a great actor of course.
@LeRoi-Two-Lane Blacktop is in the archives I think.
As is Shinoda’s Pale Flower
@Malith. Thanks, didn’t see them on their year’s pages (1964 and 1971), but may have looked at the wrong year/place.
@LeRoi-Stillman’s Metropolitan is in the archives too. Both Metropolitan and Pale Flower has high ratings. Pale Flower is included in the top 1000 list.
Not to nitpick, but I’d say say the rich period for French and Italian films started a bit earlier in the mid to late 1940s with Italian neorealism. You could argue Rossellini’s Rome, Open City from 1945 and Pasolini’s tragic death in 1975 are its rough bookends.
Maybe a plurality of the greatest directors in film history have been native English speakers, but saying it’s the majority may be stretching things I think.
Even Drake’s top 20 directors as currently listed on this site support the plurality thesis.
Can you picture Trintignant in any of Alain Delon roles (say Tom Ripley), since both are of about same age and more importantly can internalize as well as anyone also both have looks?
@M*A*S*H – Le Samouraï is the one that got away for Trintignant – he would crush it in Melville’s film. I am not so sure about the others. There’s an openness in Rocco I don’t see from Trintignant. L’Eclisse sort of requires Delon’s superior looks and Tom Ripley has a certain charisma Delon can do better than Trintignant
I think I have to agree about L’Eclisse Or The Leopard but i think Trintignant can do both Rocco and Ripley. I see it yeah! Trintignant was in a talented Mr Ripley adaptation by Claude Chabrol. The genders were switched there so Trintignant kinda played Gwyneth Paltrow’s role I guess ( I have not seen the movie, I don’t even know its name but i know it exits).
I was expecting to see Bill Murray tbh. You talk about actor as auteur theory and Mitchum as the poster child. I think Murray belongs there. Look at his top 5.
1. Lost in Translation
2. Broken Flowers
3. Rushmore
4. Groundhog Day
5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
I think I’ll have Murray in my top 25. It’s a combination of talent, resume and a consistent acting style.
@M*A*S*H- He would be a poor substitute for Delon as either Rocco or Ripley. Murray has a strong case- but not quite as strong as these top 34 listed so far
I know but it’s not that Trintignant is limited in any way. He’s a great actor. I’m glad he’s atleast top 35 , if not higher.