'Jean-Pierre Léaud is anti-documentary, with a mere greeting we slide into fiction, if not science fiction. His realism is the same as that of dreams.’ -- Francois Truffaut
'If the French New Wave has a face, it might be the beaky, piercing-eyed visage of Jean-Pierre Léaud. In 1959, at age fifteen, Léaud made his debut as Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows; over the next two decades, he would play alter ego not only to Truffaut, but to a generation that grew up (or failed to) in parallel with him. For Jean-Luc Godard, he was one of the “children of Marx and Coca-Cola” in films like Masculine Feminine (1966) and La Chinoise (1967). Later, Léaud worked with Jacques Rivette in the epic Out 1 (1972) and stalked through the wreckage of the late-sixties dream in Jean Eustache’s anti-epic The Mother and the Whore (1973), a film and a performance that obliterate sentimentality. The effect of all these collaborations is cumulative: when Léaud appears in a film by Aki Kaurismäki or Olivier Assayas, his history appears with him.
'When Italo Calvino wrote his lecture on lightness for Six Memos for the Next Millennium, he described a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which Perseus, carrying Medusa's head, puts it down for a moment, resting it on a bed of coral. It's the importance of both Perseus' gesture and Ovid's observation of it that Calvino draws our attention to.
'In a less dramatic sense, thinking about Jean-Pierre Léaud inevitably involves thinking about gestures. Few actors carry with them such a clear, familiar repertoire of gestures, movements, ways of speaking, declaiming. There's one gesture, above all - an emphatic movement of the hand, the forefinger jabbing the air, making a point - which first registers, briefly, in Les 400 Coups. There's another with the left hand, palm open, used more often to indicate denial, the negative.
You could compile a field guide to Léaud. The smoothing back of the hair. The blink. A look, eyes glazed, concentrated, staring into a space immediately in front of him. A purposeful way of walking, leaning forward, in profile, crossing the screen from one side to the other that is Roadrunner-like in its single-minded determination. These gestures have a strange life of their own, a characteristic pace and rhythm: sometimes a somnambulistic quality, sometimes incorporated into a frantic routine, a demonstration of Léaud as an accomplished physical comedian.
'Manny Farber, writing of Le Départ (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1966), in a review of the New York Film Festival, said that Léaud was "the only one that could be remembered with any clarity, with any sense of a physical impact coming from the screen." Farber made some brief, vivid observations of Léaud's performance as a hairdresser with an automotive obsession. "With his crimped manner, a darkly impassioned face, and intensely clear definition of some vigorous act that makes him suggest a pair of scissors gone angrily out of control," he wrote. "Léaud's acting trademark is a passionate decision that peaks his frenzied exasperation, physical compulsiveness. His taunted, berserk, exhausted moods are not unlike Julie Harris's Frankie Adams in The Member of the Wedding (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), the same sense that everything around them is insipid, banal, and what they need, crave, is a release to some glamorous scene. With Léaud, the release never comes; he's a sort of Lilliputian given a streak of go-go energy, trying to keep from sinking in the middle-class sloth, a near paranoid who's dead if he ever sinks down."
'As an actor, he is active, an approach that elsewhere often denotes a kind of ingratiating, "watch me!" relationship with an audience, a desperate grab for attention and love. But with Léaud, it's a different story. Often, his performance (that is, his character's performance) seems to be for himself, certainly not for the spectators. For the camera, perhaps - for the cinematic process itself. Léaud, the actor, lets us observe a character's private, self-examining rituals. There's a strange mixture of generosity and narcissism, risk and repetition in this approach. It makes possible the more vulnerable, devastating performances.' -- Philippa Hawker, Senses of Cinema
Gallery
Further
Jean-Pierre Léaud @ IMDb
Jean-Pierre Léaud @ allocine
Jean-Pierre Léaud, le retour @ La Cinematheque Francais
'Because of Tenderness: Thoughts on the Performance of Jean-Pierre Léaud' @ sensesofcinema.com
'The Adventures of Antoine Doinel' DVD Box Set
'Jean-Pierre Léaud, nerd boyfriend'
Jean-Pierre Leaud thread @ Mubi Forum
Jean-Pierre Leaud page @ Facebook
General
Jean-Pierre Leaud being a bad ass on a go kart.
Vas-y! Vas-y! Jean-Pierre!!
J-PL interviewed in 1973 (w/ English subtitles)
J-PL smoking
Jean-Pierre Leaud May Finally Outgrow Life & Love on the Run
June 25, 1979, People Magazine
When French director Francois Truffaut began his career 20 years ago with the semiautobiographical The 400 Blows, he cast 14-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud as the sensitive, rebellious main character. The movie—with its unforgettable freeze frame ending of the youth, "Antoine Doinel," on the beach—became a classic. The collaboration did not end there. In four subsequent films, director Truffaut, actor Léaud and the character Doinel have arguably become the most curious—and durable—manage a trois in cinema.
Like his screen counterpart, Léaud, who turns 35 this week, is an impulsive romantic. "The strongest moments in my life," he says, "are when I'm filming. It's an adventure. As an actor I try to seduce someone, try to share something. The rest of my time is spent exploring experiences with women."
As charmingly quirky and vulnerable as Doinel, Léaud has never learned to drive a car and practices his lines by reading aloud—sometimes to his mother—in a small cemetery across from his Montparnasse apartment. His slight build, deep-set eyes and nervous gestures also eerily resemble those of Truffaut, whom Léaud calls his "spiritual parent. He gave me the world of cinema; he is the only one who tells me the truth about my work."
The rebellious Truffaut, raised mainly by a wet nurse and his grandmother who died when he was 8, was eventually turned over to juvenile authorities by his architect father. The boy left school at 14 and was later discharged from the army as "an unstable personality." Léaud, the son of playwright Pierre Léaud and actress Jacqueline Pierreux, one of France's most popular postwar pinup girls, had been expelled from more than half a dozen boarding schools by age 13. "I was impossible," he admits. "I couldn't adjust."
Léaud recalls that when he spotted a casting notice for The 400 Blows, "I knew instinctively that the audition was the most important moment of my life." Truffaut recalls their first interview. "Other boys were much closer to the character and to me," he says, "but Jean-Pierre's intensity attracted me." At 15, Léaud moved to his own apartment and, under Truffaut's tutelage, fell into heady "New Wave" film circles.
Léaud has never married, explaining, "I've had my experiences with marriage in cinema roles." When not filming, Léaud says, "I reflect, I listen to music, make notes, make love." He takes all his meals in restaurants, often alone, favoring (as did Ernest Hemingway early on) the Dome cafe. With the passing of Doinel, Léaud is beginning to look more pragmatically at himself. "In my love life, it's necessary that I succeed," he says, and adds pensively: "I must intellectualize more. Only life can bring maturity. I think it's time to pass into adulthood."
12 of Jean Pierre Léaud's 40 films
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Jean Cocteau Testament d'Orphée (1960)
'Testament of Orpheus is a 1960 film directed by and starring Jean Cocteau. It is considered the final part of the Orphic Trilogy, following The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Orphée (1950). In the cast are Charles Aznavour, Lucia Bosé, Maria Casarès, Nicole Courcel, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Daniel Gélin, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Serge Lifar, Jean Marais, François Périer and Françoise Sagan. It also includes cameo appearances by Pablo Picasso and Yul Brynner. The film is in black-and-white, with just a few seconds of color film spliced in.' -- evene.fr
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Jean-Luc Godard Masculin, féminin (1966)
'This low-budget, black and white film stars French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a romantic young idealist and literary lion-wannabe who chases budding pop star, Madeleine (Chantal Goya, a real life Yé-yé girl). Despite markedly different musical tastes and political leanings, the two soon become romantically involved and begin a ménage à quatre with Madeleine’s two roommates, Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport) and Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert). Ostensibly basing his film on two stories by Guy de Maupassant, Godard mixes off-the-cuff reportage and mise en scène to create a strikingly honest portrait of youth and sex, with Godard’s camera probing his young actors in a series of vérité-style interviews about love, love-making, and politics.' -- Only Old Movies
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Jean Luc Godard La Chinoise (1967)
'La Chinoise should be ubiquitous. It anticipates not just the student riots in 1968 Paris but also the greatest in DVD supplements, the archived audition. Again, it was Truffaut who spliced Léaud’s tryout for The 400 Blows — an improvised question-and-answer—into the final cut. But where Truffaut courted naturalism through the unrehearsed scene, La Chinoise solicits the fleet-footed mechanics of invention. Léaud plays Guillaume, a student and Maoist, who pontificates at length, but only sometimes as Guillaume. Sometimes he is Jean-Pierre, sometimes he addresses his classmates, and sometimes he laughs at the crowd. If the audience is not us, it is Godard, who we hear, or maybe Raoul Coutard, the cameraman, who we see behind his camera.' -- Reverse Shot
Trailer
The first 14 minutes (English subtitles)
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Jerzy Skolimowski Le Depart (1967)
'Marc (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is a young man who works at a local beauty shop and dreams of cars. When he borrows his boss's car for the evening, he is seduced by a wealthy woman before finding love with a younger woman nearer to his own age. Marc also dreams of being part of the affluent society he observes but which always seems to elude him. Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, the film won the Golden Bear at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival.' -- nndb
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Francois Truffaut Baisers volés (Stolen Kisses, 1968)
'François Truffaut’s charming 1968 romantic comedy, Stolen Kisses, opened in France four months after the paralyzing May strikes by students and workers that nearly succeeded in toppling the government of President Charles de Gaulle. The film was so thoroughly out of step with the radicalized cultural scene into which it was released that its popularity surprised everyone, perhaps Truffaut most of all. Truffaut doesn’t push too hard on any of this material. The gentle tone of Stolen Kisses seems keyed to Jean-Pierre Léaud’s unassuming poignancy in the role of Antoine Doinel. His relaxed improvisatory manner in front of the camera remains as fresh today as it did in 1968.' -- Selected Reviews
Trailer
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The final 2 minutes
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Pier Paolo Pasolini Porcile (Pigsty, 1969)
'Porcile features two parallel stories. The first one is set in an unknown past time and is about a young man (Pierre Clémenti) who wanders in a volcanic landscape (shot around Etna) and turns into a cannibal. The second story is about Herr Klotz (Lionelli), a German industrialist and his young son Julian (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who live in 1960s Germany. Julian, instead of passing time with his radically politicised fiancée Ida (Wiazemsky), prefers to build relationships with pigs. Herr Klotz, on the other hand, with his loyal aide Hans Guenther (Ferreri) tries to solve his rivalry with fellow industrialist Herdhitze (Tognazzi). The two industrialists join forces while Julian gets eaten by pigs in the sty.' -- Wikipedia
Trailer
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Jacques Rivette Out 1 (1971)
'Out 1 is a 1971 film directed by Jacques Rivette, one of the major filmmakers of the French New Wave. Notorious for its unwieldy length of twelve hours and forty minutes, it is also referred to as Out 1: Noli me tangere. When asked why the film is called Out 1, Rivette responded, "I choose "Out" as the opposite of the vogue word "in", which had caught in France and which I thought was silly. The action of the film is rather like a serial which could continue through several episodes, so I gave it the number "One"." The Spectre subtitle for the shorter version was similarly chosen for its ambiguous and various indistinct meanings, while the Noli me tangere subtitle ("don't touch me") for the original version is clearly a reference to it being the full length film as intended by Rivette.' -- Wikipedia
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Jean Eustache La Mere et la Putain (The Mother and the Whore, 1973)
'In one scene in the middle of Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (1973), Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), fooling around a bit too enthusiastically with his lover Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, the 'whore' to Bernadette Lafont's 'mother'), ignores her when she asks him to slow down and let her remove her tampon. As she tries to retrieve it, Alexandre, too delighted by the situation to keep it to himself, picks up the phone and calls a friend to tell him the story as it continues to play out before him (the friend, sadly, fails to answer). This is probably the funniest scene in the movie, but it's also no less bleak than the rest of The Mother and the Whore, graphically demonstrating Alexandre's insensitivity and self-absorption-nothing is private for Alexandre, everything is material waiting to be turned into an anecdote or to contribute to the persona he carefully maintains and presents to the world-and as such it's also emblematic of the remarkable balance between humor and despair that Eustache maintains throughout the film.' -- Senses of Cinema
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Francois Truffaut La nuit américaine (Day for Night, 1973)
'François Truffaut's 1973 film shows us the reverse side of cinema's tapestry: the audience sees the intricately woven figures and pleasing shapes, but behind there are the ragged knots, rough-looking jumbles and loose threads. In many ways, Day for Night is similar to Godard's Contempt, and Truffaut does admit the suspicion that cinema and especially Hollywood is contemptible: mendacious, infantilised and corrupt. But this suspicion is finally dispelled in favour of celebration: Godard broke with Truffaut after seeing Day for Night. It is a breezy, richly enjoyable if not especially profound film about cinema.' -- Guardian.co.uk
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Catherine Breillat 36 fillette (1988)
'While vacationing with her family, 14-year-old Lili (Delphine Zentout) vows to lose her virginity. She attracts the attention of a good-looking, middle-aged playboy (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and seduces him with the skill of an adult and the naiveté of a child. But another chance encounter with a musician furthers her journey toward sexual awakening in this film based on the popular novel by writer-director Catherine Breillat.' -- GetGlue
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Olivier Assayas Irma Vep (1996)
'Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung (Ashes of Time Redux, In the Mood for Love) plays herself in haute auteur Olivier Assayas’ spiky satire of the French film industry. After seeing her in Johnny To’s cult-actioner Heroic Trio, past-his-prime director René Vidal (New Wave legend Jean-Pierre Léaud) impetuously casts Cheung as the lead in his remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Unable to speak a word of French and clad in a head-to-toe rubber catsuit, Cheung finds herself adrift among the disorganized crew—including an increasingly erratic Vidal, a lovesick bi-sexual costumer (Nathalie Richard) and a gossipy executive’s wife (Bulle Ogier). With freewheeling cinematography choreographed to the strains of Sonic Youth and Luna, Irma Vep immerses the viewer into the heady desperation and l’amour fou of modern movie-making.' –- Zeitgeist Films
Trailer
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Bertrand Bonello Le Pornographe (The Pornographer, 2001)
'Jacques Laurent (Jean-Pierre Leaud) made pornographic films in the 1970's and '80's, but had put that aside for 20 years. His artistic ideas, born of the '60's counter-culture, had elevated the entire genre. Older and paunchier, he is now directing a porno again. Jacques's artistry clashes with his financially-troubled producer's ideas about shooting hard-core sex. Jacques has been estranged from his son Joseph for years, since the son first learned the nature of the family business. They are now speaking again. Joseph and his friends want to recapture the idealism of 1968 with a protest. Separated from his wife, Jacques strives for personal renewal with plans to build a new house by himself.' -- IMDb
Trailer
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p.s. Hey. ** Mw, Hello, mw. Welcome to here, good to meet you, and thanks much. Why are you an exile in Zurich? Please visit often, if you like. ** Brendan, Glad you felt the love, B, and thanks for upgrading this place. Assuming that 8 am wake-up call came from Vegas, how was it? Assuming you're not hooked up to the cyber while there, welcome back! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Yeah, I know, there were some strangely high toned escorts typing out their profiles this month. Rehearsals have been difficult, but today is recording day -- 12:30 pm to 8 pm, yikes -- so we'll see. Residency, concert, talk ... that's very cool. Record any and all if you can. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Well, never underestimate the evil of the hard right, but given that Sarkozy's approval rating has been in the upper 20s for well over a year now without a waver, he's pretty gone. Whether the left can get their shit together enough to take a Presidency that's practically being handed to them, time will tell. ** Killer Luka, Hey, Killer. #4? Hold on. Oh, yeah, I think so too. Cat fight. Trust the flood of ideas. You won't let yourself repeat yourself. I know you. Weird/sucks about your friend and then your mom trying to steer you away from drawing naked males. Oh, by way, can you stop drawing naked males please? Kidding! Okay, now I'm going to go scour Jimi's artists lists and trying to find the older homosexual among them. Needle in a haystack, ha ha? No, that guy sounds gross. Obviously, the greatness of your trip is both unsurprising and a warm addition to the mind. Anyway, keep working, pal, and don't listen to anybody, especially your worrying side. ** CyCyLoLo, Aw, thanks, you guys! Oh, cool, in three weeks. Hopefully, I'll be here. Give me a heads up when you're on your way. Great! ** Bollo, Hi, J. I love your zine. The one you had at the show. I was just fondling while paging through it yesterday. Tell me/us when and ho the new one can be snagged. I don't know Planningtorock. Hm. I'll correct that. I was all about the last Locrian album yesterday. Weird about the bunkbed thing. I never noticed that before. Bizarro. ** Colin, Hi, Colin. Awesome about your 'Suicide' piece. I'll read it when I get back from my endless day. Everyone, You probably remember that one of the books I loved here last weekend was Edouard Leve's 'Suicide', and you all know the superb writer and d.l. Colin (Herd). So, Colin has written about 'Suicide' for the great 3:AM Magazine, and, given the fineness of both the book and the reviewer, I think it's imperative that you get his take. You can do that here. Oh, Maintenant Slovakia is exactly what I should have imagined it is, duh. Curious to hear what that's like. Thanks, man. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! Thanks a zillion about the Cortazar post! So great of you! Yeah, totally about the Michael Kimball book. The new King of Sad: really nice. 'Tiger Feet', yeah, ha ha, Mud. Sure. Nice tune. My favorite T. Rex? Hm. Album-wise, I'm very fond of the transitional, eponymous 'T. Rex' album. Of course, 'Slider' is amazing if an obvious choice. Favorite single? That's tough. 'Telegram Sam'? Was 'Elemental Child' a single? Probably not. What's yours? You're on a '70s glam kick? ** A NON, Hi. Yeah, your work is beautiful. I think that book collection idea would be really interesting. I really liked the connections between the pieces or the appearance of such. Oh, sorry for the incorrect gender assumption. It won't happen again. I guess I read too much or the wrong gender into your avatar. Busy bee, yeah, that's me, and a bit too much at the moment. And you? What's going on with you? Please tell me more about you and yours, if you like? ** MANCY, Hi! I still haven't read that interview, yikes. Tonight. Thanks. What's the latest with you? ** Schlix, Well, early morning means you're probably here by now. Cool. I might even see you before I 'see' you next. Looking forward to it! ** Dr. Dusty Dee, Greetings, Dusty! Nice to see you! I'm glad the main project is still on its way. As long as your perfectionism doesn't eat you alive, it's a really good thing. Congrats on being a student again. What are your classes? Community college is just fine. That title has a bad rap, I guess, but I spent more -- and much more valuable -- time at community college than I did at university. Yeah, good news, man! ** Steevee, When I used to go vegan and eat very little for six to eight month periods every couple years, there was a point where the hunger turned into something else, kind of an enjoyment of the feeling of hunger or something that I think was bolstered by this weird kind of almost drug-feeling high or heightened energy that took over and that I was told is a natural effect that occurs when the body adjusts to not being fed enough and starts to eat your body's fat instead. I don't know how that happened though, and I think it was probably a mental discipline thing too. Have you thought about hypnosis? I've never done that, but I know people who've dieted, quit smoking, etc., with the help of hypnosis and have found it very helpful as an attitude adjuster if nothing else. ** Thomas Moronic, Hey. Yeah, I know what you mean about that accidental narrative with the escort posts. I only notice it when they're finished. It never dictates my choices. It's like a natural thing or a naturally occurring trick or something? TPfBPaH sound enough like stuff I would like from your description to get something. I'll get that EP you recommended to start. Thanks a lot, man. Hope the seaside trip is a blast. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Yeah, when the nose acts up, the ears often follow, or vice versa. I guess because of all those weird, connecting head caves that allow them to conspire or something. Probably not. Aging sucks, yeah, but at least you get to become distinguished. Well, I guess everybody here is automatically distinguished, but I mean out there. You know, in the real world. Not that I know anything about that place. ** That's it? Okay. I'm giving the blog over to the great New Wave icon Mr. Jean-Pierre Léaud today just because it feels so good. Did it make you feel good? Gosh, I hope so. See you tomorrow.
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