Visions of Jean-Pierre
April 3, 2017 1:34 PM Subscribe
A firsthand portrait of the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud at work by Olivier Assayas (Film Comment).
Also from Film Comment, an interview with Léaud whose latest role is the Sun King himself in Albert Serra's "Death of Louis XIV" (trailer):
Also from Film Comment, an interview with Léaud whose latest role is the Sun King himself in Albert Serra's "Death of Louis XIV" (trailer):
"I stepped into the shoes of an old man in his death throes, and you cannot avoid personal repercussions if you play someone like that. And that’s when I began to feel the proximity of my own death and realized that Albert Serra was recording my own death through Louis XIV’s. At my age, you cannot banish death from your life. I was reminded of Jean Cocteau’s quote: “Cinema is death at work.”"Lastly, from the NYT: From Teenage Rebel to Dying King, Jean-Pierre Léaud and a Life Lived on Film.
You know there must be something pretty unique about an actor who facilitated a rift between two great directors, Godard and Truffaut, near the beginning of his career over whose vision he better represents.
While I am not expert in all of Léaud's work, but that which I've seen suggests one of his great qualities as an actor is in how he seemed to be one of the first to seem at ease or natural in the condition of artifice, or more simply put, to neither seem to be "acting" in the older more demonstrative sense, yet to not be unaware of his being in front of a camera performing either. He seemed himself under the conditions of being filmed, as if that sort of examination was the natural state of things, which it, in many ways, has indeed become.
That Assayas would say he never sees the actor or actress, just the person, fits this feeling, where, as I see it, Léaud is himself as a character without intruding himself on the character in something like a method acting sense or through any extra emphasis on maintaining a persona to which roles are fit such as in the old school of stardom someone such as John Wayne might represent.
Léaud seemed to find himself in the roles he played without needing to make them into his own image. He was a perfect actor for the sort of auteurist movies that came out of the French New Wave and which found echo in later works by director's influenced by that movement. The list of important directors Léaud worked with alone speaks volumes about his importance to film history and in particular that type of self aware cinema. Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Rivette, Skolimoski, Eustache, Garrell, Pasolini, Moullet, Rocha, Bertolucci, Ruiz, Breillat, Kaurismaki, Tsai Ming Laing, Assayas, and so on. All are directors who didn't expect film making to be invisible so the audience could just lose themselves in the story, but who instead draw attention to the film as a film, leaving Léaud and others to find ways to embody roles that do not necessarily follow standard dramatic arcs of emotions in ways that still read as real for their characters.
Personally, I'd point to Assayas' brilliant Irma Vep as a the epitome of this type of filmmaking. It isn't the film most associated with Léaud, or one that contains his most memorable performance/role, but it summarizes all that Léaud and the many directors who worked with him sought to accomplish as well as any film might. If someone is looking, however, for recommendations on which of Léaud's films are worth seeing, well, one could almost select from his filmography randomly and find a worthwhile choice, but those early works with Truffaut and Godard will be the ones he'll forever be most associated with, so those would be the place to start, then browse away among the other directors mentioned above to find many other great works. Once you develop a bit of a taste for this brand of cinema you start to think about movie making differently, and Léaud's part in establishing a method of performance befitting the method is indeed worth note and celebration.
I wish I could attend some of the celebration of his work, but those damn New Yorkers get to hog all the good stuff while those of us in the boondocks only get to read about it.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:35 AM on April 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
While I am not expert in all of Léaud's work, but that which I've seen suggests one of his great qualities as an actor is in how he seemed to be one of the first to seem at ease or natural in the condition of artifice, or more simply put, to neither seem to be "acting" in the older more demonstrative sense, yet to not be unaware of his being in front of a camera performing either. He seemed himself under the conditions of being filmed, as if that sort of examination was the natural state of things, which it, in many ways, has indeed become.
That Assayas would say he never sees the actor or actress, just the person, fits this feeling, where, as I see it, Léaud is himself as a character without intruding himself on the character in something like a method acting sense or through any extra emphasis on maintaining a persona to which roles are fit such as in the old school of stardom someone such as John Wayne might represent.
Léaud seemed to find himself in the roles he played without needing to make them into his own image. He was a perfect actor for the sort of auteurist movies that came out of the French New Wave and which found echo in later works by director's influenced by that movement. The list of important directors Léaud worked with alone speaks volumes about his importance to film history and in particular that type of self aware cinema. Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Rivette, Skolimoski, Eustache, Garrell, Pasolini, Moullet, Rocha, Bertolucci, Ruiz, Breillat, Kaurismaki, Tsai Ming Laing, Assayas, and so on. All are directors who didn't expect film making to be invisible so the audience could just lose themselves in the story, but who instead draw attention to the film as a film, leaving Léaud and others to find ways to embody roles that do not necessarily follow standard dramatic arcs of emotions in ways that still read as real for their characters.
Personally, I'd point to Assayas' brilliant Irma Vep as a the epitome of this type of filmmaking. It isn't the film most associated with Léaud, or one that contains his most memorable performance/role, but it summarizes all that Léaud and the many directors who worked with him sought to accomplish as well as any film might. If someone is looking, however, for recommendations on which of Léaud's films are worth seeing, well, one could almost select from his filmography randomly and find a worthwhile choice, but those early works with Truffaut and Godard will be the ones he'll forever be most associated with, so those would be the place to start, then browse away among the other directors mentioned above to find many other great works. Once you develop a bit of a taste for this brand of cinema you start to think about movie making differently, and Léaud's part in establishing a method of performance befitting the method is indeed worth note and celebration.
I wish I could attend some of the celebration of his work, but those damn New Yorkers get to hog all the good stuff while those of us in the boondocks only get to read about it.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:35 AM on April 4, 2017 [2 favorites]
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