Man with a Valise

The scene: Los Angeles International Airport. Jean-Louis Trintignant, just arrived from Paris, waits in line at the immigration counter, unrecognized by the other passengers behind him. Cut to: the same location, a few days later. Trintignant is arriving again, only this time it is the opening sequence of The Outside Man, the new movie he has come to the U.S. to make, and a camera crew is filming the scene. As a French gunman who flies into L.A. to assassinate a gang boss, Trintignant says very little in the movie, which is just as well, since he barely speaks English. Most of his dialogue is with Ann-Margret, as a topless dancer who shelters him when he is on the lam--and in such circumstances, who needs English?

The difficulty of the role is what might have lured most actors. But Trintignant agreed to make the film first because the director is Jacques Deray, who made Borsalino. "An interesting director will make an interesting film," Trintignant explained to TIME Correspondent Roland Flamini (in French). "An actor is at best his inspired assistant. Second, there's the story. And only after that do I consider the part." His wife Nadine, a French director who has made two Trintignant pictures, says: "Once he has made a commitment to a director, he never questions him--and , that includes me. At home we argue about films all the time. But on the set, he's in my hands."

Though The Outside Man is Trintignant's 53rd movie in 17 years, the quiet, diffident actor is relatively new to the luxury of choosing his films and directors. Trintignant, 41, has emerged only in recent years as a superbly subtle technician of the screen. His taut, understated performances have included such diverse characterizations as the driven public prosecutor in Costa-Gavras' Z, the uptight Catholic in Rohmer's Ma Nuit Chez Maud and the intellectual fascist-killer in Bertolucci's The Conformist. Trintignant's acting style is condensed to a prodigious point of thrift in which complex characters are brought to life with extraordinary economy of gesture and expression. "The best actor in the world," he maintains, "is the one who feels the most and shows the least."

The Inner Life. Trintignant was a shy, 20-year-old from Nimes, in the south of France, when he enrolled in the National Film School in Paris. He wanted to be a director, but he took an acting course to gain confidence--and get rid of a telltale provincial accent. The course led to a role as Brigitte Bardot's unhappy husband in her first major movie, And God Created Woman. BB walked away with the picture, but Trintignant walked away with BB. Their widely publicized affair simmered for three years, until Trintignant got a draft notice. He swallowed large quantities of egg white in a desperate attempt to induce an albuminous condition and get a medical deferment, but the army inducted him anyway.

After his discharge, Trintignant spent a decade in a rut, playing mooning lovers and timid husbands in a succession of forgettable pictures (Mata Hari, The Game of Truth). These were interspersed with equally unmemorable Paris stage performances, including an attempt at Hamlet that was tragic in more ways than one.

Trintignant's breakthrough came in 1966 with A Man and a Woman. The low-key love story was tailor-made to his personality by his friend, Director Claude Lelouch, and filmed without a script in four weeks. Offers began pouring in, but Trintignant had had enough of romantic parts. "Love scenes embarrass me," he says. "I'm not an exhibitionist." He now prefers political films that share his left-wing viewpoint (the most recent: The Assassination, based on the Ben Barka affair in France) and bad-guy roles "to counteract my own good nature." Costa-Gavras calls him "the only star who'll make films he likes even if those films can ruin his career."

Trintignant uses several devices for cultivating the "inner life" that is the key to his characterizations. To bring out his bad side, he plays poker--"an evil game. If you want to win you have to be vicious." To heighten his perception, he has delved into drugs, fasted and conducted sexual experiments with his wife. To sharpen his powers of concentration, he races his Formula V car. Dominique Sanda, his co-star in The Conformist, describes him as "an eye that listens attentively." Says Trintignant: "I wake up in the morning and think, 'How would my character wash his teeth?' I build up a valise of ideas about him." With that valise, Trintignant never travels light.

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