Background
Jean-Pierre Léaud was born on 28 May 1944 in Paris.
Jean-Pierre Léaud was born on 28 May 1944 in Paris.
Léaud stared out of the frozen ending of The 400 Blows (59, François Truffaut), a crew-cut, round-faced adolescent, as torn between inhibition and cheeky humor as Truffaut himself. The spontaneity of that film, and its moving nostalgia for a nearly brutalized childhood, hung in large part on the complicity between Truffaut and Léaud.
He grew up a lean, furtive young man; his hair flopped lankly over a sharp fox’s nose. No question that Léaud was alert and compelling, but he looked sly, living off events in Aims, not actually touched by them. His Antoine Doinel was too indifferent to the gentle daydream of Stolen Kisses (68, Truffaut), especially the wondrous pact that Delphine Seyrig makes with him. It seemed a case of Truffaut rationalizing his choice, rather than feeling it. He was too sure a judge of actors to accept Léaud’s meanness of spirit, but Léaud was an emblem he felt unable to discard. The potential for a tender account of sentimental education in Stolen Kisses foundered on Léaud’s frosty privacy. Bed and Board (70, Truffaut), with Doinel married, was Truffauts poorest him, in which his offhand lyricism veered into irrelevant knockabout. Léaud was a good deal more integral to Anne and Muriel (71, Truffaut), but hardly attuned to the literary resonance of the him and its emotional subtleties. We could barely accept him as a novelist, even if the ending, with his sudden recognition of himself as a wintry solitary, was suited to Léaud’s hurrying selfishness.
The adult Léaud is a darting, paranoid personality, fit for the jagged political-strip cartooning of late Godard. When Godard violently abandoned tenderness in Pierrot le Fou, he made Léaud his central character in Masculin-Feminin (66), where the actor’s tendency to abrupt denials of solitariness are countered by his self-nagging hunched stance. In keeping with his capacities, Léaud was the bellboy in Godard’s sketch from Le Plus Vieux Metier du Monde (67); “Donald Siegel” in Made in USA (66. Godard); in La Chinoise (67, Godard); the hgure of Saint-Just, breaking down to become another tripper in Week-End (67, Godard); the great-grandson of Rousseau in Le Gai Savoir (68, Godard).
Elsewhere, he appeared in Le Testament d'Orphée (60, Jean Cocteau); in Truffauts episode, as Doinel again, from LAmour à Vingt Ans (62); essaying his brusque charm in Le Père Noel a les Yeux Bleus (65, Jean Eustache); actually engaging in Le Départ (67, Jerzy Skolimowski); in an episode from Dialog (68, Skolimowski); in Porcile (69, Pier Paolo Pasolini); Os Herdeiros (69, Carlos Diegues); Le Lion à Sept Têtes (70, Glauber Rocha); Une Aventure de Billy le Kid (70, Luc Moullet); playing up as the filmmaker in Last Tango in Pans (72, Bernardo Bertolucci): as the central figure in La Maman et la Putain (73, Eustache), gradually dismantled by the more mature anguish of the women; as the blindly vain actor in Daiy for Night (73, Truffaut) who makes audiences gasp with distaste when he phones Jacqueline Bisset’s husband.
The one film that fully employs Léaud’s manic solitariness is Out One: Spectre (73, Jacques Riyette) in which he is the most obsessed victim of the idea of the “13.”
In 1979, he was back again as Doinel in Love on the Run, thirty-five still going on seventeen, but shamed as an actor by the vitality and candor lie had had in The 400 Blows.
Since then, one hears that he has had personal difficulties. But he works on, doggedlv, the face increasingly haunted: On a Pas Fini d’en Parler (79, Bernard Dubois); Parano (81, Dubois); Aiutami a Sognare (81, Pupi Avati); La Cassure (83, Ramon Munoz); Rebelóte (83, Jacques Richard); in the Rue Fontaine episode of Paris Vu Par. . . 20 Ans Après (84, Philippe Garel); LHerbe Rouge (84, Pierre Kast); Csak egy Mozi (84, Pal Sandor); LTle au Trésor (85, Raul Ruiz); Detective (85, Godard); Grandeur et Decadence d’un Petit Commerce de Cinema (86, Godard); 36 Filette (88, Catherine Breillat); La Femme de Paille (88, Suzanne Schiffman); Jane B. par Agnes V. (88, Agnes Varda); Les Ministères de l’Art (88, André Téchiné); I Hired a Contract Killer (90, Aki Kaurismakï); La Vie de Bohème (90, Kaurisinaki); and J'Embrasse Pas (91, Téchiné).
As he conies up on sixty, he works as hard, and as if he were an actor. Yet for many of us he seems like a startled being caught in the haunted house and never able to find the exit: Pans s’Eueille (91, Olivier Assayas); Missa on Musette? (92, Veikko Nieminen and Jarmo Vesteri); La Naissance de l'Amour (93, Garrel); Personne ne M’Aime (94, Marion Vernoux); Mon Homme (96, Bertrand Blier); Le Journal du Séducteur (96, Daniele Dubroux); Irma Vep (96, Assayas); Pour Rire! (97, Lucas Belvaux); uncredited in Elizabeth (98, Shakhar Kapur); Innocent (98, Costa Natsis); Une Affaire de Goût (99, Bernard Rapp); the lead in L'Affaire Marcorelle (00, Serge Le Peron); Ni Neibian JidianfWhat Time Is It Over There? (01, Tsai Mingliang); Le Pomographe (01, Bertrand Bonello).