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 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 |
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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/
@Alt Mash – quite right – thank you for pointing out the error
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.
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