Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist”, Eric Rohmer’s “My Night at Maud’s” and Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and Woman” died at their home in southern France on Friday. He was 91 years old.
His wife, Marianne Hepfner Trintignant, confirmed the death of Agence France-Presse. Trintignant announced in 2018 that he has prostate cancer and will retire.
Trantignant seemed to specialize in playing the flawed Everyman and slowly revealing the depth of his character.
“Jean-Louis Trintignant has been one of the great stealth actors in the film for more than half a century,” critic Terrence Rafferty wrote in the 2012 New York Times.
That year, Michael Haneke’s “Amour” was released and won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Trintinant, who played the leading role for the first time in the Millennium, portrayed a frail old man, played by Emmanuelle Riva, who was almost blind by that time and was taking care of his dying wife. Times — In a movie that is a love story and a thorough investigation of illness and death.
It was the pinnacle of a rich career playing a gallery of characters that were rarely attractive. Trantignant was an emotionally fragile fascist in The Conformist (1970). A timid and meticulous graduate student who accidentally fell into Rivaldo Bon Vivant in Dino Risi’s 1962 “The Easy Life” (“The Easy Life”). And the oppressed Roman Catholics from the provinces who resist the fascinating progress of beautiful divorced women in “My Night at Maud’s” (1969).
“If anyone laughs because I wasn’t having sex with Maud, well, I’d rather be considered ridiculous than considered a hero,” Trantignant said in a 1970 Times interview. Said in. “Even the kissing scene made me bored.”
In 1969 he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. He was awarded a foreign language Oscar in the same year for his acting as an administrator investigating the assassination of a Greek politician in the Costa-Gavras political thriller “Z”.
For the American audience, Mr. Trintignant did not fit the traditional image of French movie stars, such as the wise Jean-Paul Belmondo, the working-class hero Jean Gabin, and the sophisticated Maurice Chevalier. He was more modest.
“The best actors in the world are the ones who feel the most and show the least,” he once said.
Jean-Louis Xavier Trintignant was born on December 11, 1930 in Piolenc, a small town in southeastern France. His father, Raul, was a wealthy businessman and a local politician.Jean-Louis seriously considered becoming a race car driver like his uncle Maurice Trantignant, A top rival in the 1950s and 1960s, just 13 years older than Jean-Louis. (Another uncle, Louis Trintignant, also raced and was killed in 1933 when his car crashed.)
Jean-Louis instead studied law and thought he would drive his father into politics. However, while a student of the Faculty of Law in Aix-en-Provence, he attended the performance of Molière’s “The Miser” and was so absorbed in it that he decided to pursue a career on the stage.
Trantignant moved to Paris to study acting and began appearing in theater at the age of 20. After touring France in the early 1950s, he was welcomed as one of the most talented young stage actors in the country and was immediately offered a film contract.
In Roger Vadim’s 1956 movie And God Created Woman, as a young and naive husband who fell in love with the devilish and frivolous wife played by Brigitte Bardot (the wife of Mr. Vadim at the time). Starred. Breakout Sex-The Role of Kittens. Rumors spread that she and Mr. Trantignant were living real life during the shoot, whether true or not. The marriage between Bardot and Vadim ended in 1957.
Nonetheless, Vadim cast Trintignant in the 1959 film “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” based on a sexually scandalous 18th-century novel about a conspiracy lady. Trintignant played a less romantic role in the fascinating Chevalier Danceny, a French aristocratic music teacher.
Académie Francais, the official mediator of French culture, has accused the film of “blaspheming the classics” and of being sneaky by Roman pulpits on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Trintignant shared top billing with Vittorio Gassman on “Il Sorpasso,” which is widely regarded as Risi’s masterpiece. He played a shy law student. Fascinated by Mr. Gasman’s whimsical extroversion, he embarks on a journey through the tragic Italian countryside.
Even more impressive was Mr. Trantignant’s performance in The Conformist eight years later. Based on the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia, this film is a chilling psychological portrait of a secret Italian police officer in Fascist Italy. Mr. Trantignant is the protagonist and arranges the assassination of his old friend, a left-wing college professor that his young wife longs for.
Trantignant played the most romantic role as a racing driver in “Man and Woman” (1966). The film was an international hit and generated more box office revenue than previous French films. He said his early passion for racing and his in-depth knowledge of the sport conveyed to him by his uncle made his performance particularly credible.
However, he professed to be uncomfortable with the blatant love scene in the movie. His co-star is Anouk Aimee, a longtime friend of his wife at the time and director of Nadine Trintignant.
“It was embarrassing to be in bed with a woman like that. I knew Anook for 10 years. She was Nadine’s best friend and all the crew were watching.” The scene was a hairpin lace turn in Monte Carlo, claimed by Mr. Trantignant.
For the next 30 years, he starred in an average of three films a year, often as a supporting role rather than a starring role.
The exception was the acclaimed 1994 film “Red”, the finale of Polish director Krzysztof Kieslovski’s “Three Colors Trilogy”. In a work that tracks the parallel life of a group of people living outside Geneva, Trantignant played a cold retired judge who spy on his neighbors using high-tech surveillance equipment.
He also continued to act on the stage from time to time.
Later, Trintignant returned to his early passion for sports car racing and participated in the 1980 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 1984 Monte Carlo Rally. In the 90’s he spent a lot of time caring for his vineyards. He plays in Southern France or in theaters. His return to the film in “Amour” came after more than a decade of absence.
Mr. Trantignant’s first marriage to actress Stephane Audran ended with a divorce. He married the then actress Nadine Markand in 1960 and had three children with her. Pauline died in infancy. Successful actress Marie (who acted with her father at the age of four in “Mont Amour, Mont Amour” directed by her mother) and four beaten in a hotel room in Vilnius at the age of 41. Mother, Lithuania, filming there in the summer of 2003.
The murder caused a sensation in the European press. Trintignant’s 39-year-old boyfriend, Bertrand Cantat, one of France’s biggest rock stars, later took her in a court in Lithuania with jealous anger at planning a vacation with her ex-husband. I admitted that I was beaten.
He was convicted of manslaughter in 2004 and was released on parole in 2007, angering the Trantignant family and their supporters.
After Marie’s death, Trantignant fell into a serious depression.
“I didn’t speak for three months,” he told the Montreal newspaper The Gazette in 2012. “After that, I realized that I had to stop living, commit suicide, or stay alive.”
In 2011, he withdrew from his solo exhibition at the Avignon Festival in France in the summer and learned that Mr. Kantat would play the role of theater on stage.
Marriage with Nadine Trantignan divorced in 1976. He married racing driver Marianne Hepfner in 2000. Information about other survivors was not immediately available.
Mr. Trantignant’s eyesight deteriorated in his later years, but he accepted his condition. “We weren’t intended to live for more than 80 years,” he told The Gazette. “It’s not that bad. I’m happy alone. I have an inner life.”
Even at the height of his popularity, Mr. Trantignant claimed that acting was always a struggle.
“I’m not a natural actor,” he said in a 1970 Times interview. “Even today, I’m not an instinctive actor. I prepare with great care, and I’m completely free only when I’m in front of the camera.”